Prelude to the Tempest Op.109 No.1 comes from an hour-long score of incidental music for orchestra by Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius. In 1925 Sibelius was commissioned by the Danish Royal Theatre to create incidental music for Shakespeare's The Tempest . The resulting 34 miniatures represent Sibelius at his most modernistic and it is both rousing and powerful yet elsewhere light, gentle and airy, fully reflecting the breadth and depth of Shakespeare’s characters.