In these late symphonies, Erkki Melartin reveals two sharply contrasted faces of his art. The Fifth—misleadingly called Sinfonia brevis—is a work of striking architectural unity: themes are woven cyclically across all four movements, the first two linked without full release, until the finale gathers everything into an extended accelerando and a spectacular quadruple fugue. Lyrical warmth is never far away—birdsong flickers through the Andante, an intermezzo dances with a folk-like simplicity—yet the music’s real drama lies in its sense of organic growth and contrapuntal momentum. The Sixth inhabits a different climate altogether. Here the colours are sombre, the harmony bold and dissonance sharpened, and the symphonic argument unfolds in arch-like spans rather than traditional sonata rhetoric, with each movement shifting its tonal centre upward by chromatic steps. A recurring motto theme threads through the work, while impressionistic stillness, pentatonic “japonaiserie,” and a driving finale ostinato suggest an elemental world glimpsed in sound—absolute music with a private aura of the mystical.