Märchenbilder

Perhaps the salient feature in Kuula's music is its rather heavy pathos and elegiac quality. Now and then Kuula varied his usual Romantic idiom in an Impressionistic direction. Kuula's most unusual piece is the second of the Three Satukuvia (Fairytale Pictures) dating from 1912. This technically demanding piece combines capricious figures and passage work with shifting moods, with frequent alternation of whole-tone and minor scales, although the quiet middle section is more traditional.