Sibelius: Essential Works for Beginners Finlandia Symphony No. 2 Karelia Suite Symphony No. 5 En Saga Pohjola’s Daughter Pelléas and Melisande (Suite) 4 Lemminkäinen Legends Violin Concerto Symphony No. 7
My piano teacher in the 9th grade gave me a piano version of Finlandia to learn for my recital piece in the '60s. It changed my life. The moment I first went to the Jackson, Mississippi library to hear how it should actually sound, on the Ormandy recording with the Mormon Tab Choir, I knew I had finally discovered what real music was. I had never been happy with the old salon piano music and church hymns that had been inflicted onto me up until then, as if that was all there was. Being raised in the boondocks in a fundie religion that didn't even allow TV, movies, radio, or record players, I had never heard such gloriousness in my life. So I sought out everything else the library had by him, which wasn't much, and sat there for hours soaking it in. At that time, place, and age, I had no way of knowing that he was supposed to be unpopular or looked down on; I just knew that I identified with the music's wild loneliness, perhaps because of my own; and to this day and forever, he is my favorite composer.
Sibelius is utterly singular: his orchestral voice is unlike any other's; and his pursuit of the Beethovenian idea of a complete work from simple components puts him among a small handful of greatest symphonists. The result is music at once eccentric, elemental and impersonal. The end of Luonnotar looks out into some endless void. The Sixth Symphony a profound study in spiritual solitude. It is music of astonishing discipline, free of any indulgence.
Britten had a similar experience with Sibelius as I did. He lampooned Sibelius for years. Then one day driving around Suffolk in his car he tuned in on the radio in the middle of the 6th Symphony. He had no idea who had written it but he recognized it as an extraordinary piece of music. And so it is.
Awesome, didn't know this story. I always thought Britten was one of the few of the modern era who didn't lose his mind, practically alone in that regard. The fact that he got a chance to connect to the 6th is heartwarming.
Dave you're my fave channel, I love classical music and you make me so excited about listening to music I haven't heard yet. You're THE classical salesman. Adore Sibelius' music, the 7th is among my favourite pieces ever. Dan, 26, Newcastle England!
Great selection. So glad you included En Saga, which is the piece that made me fall in love with Sibelius in my teens. I'm now in my 70s and still love it.
I think the end of the symphony is a very clever stroke. There's a lot happening on the final pages of the score. When the loud, somewhat dissonant music played by the full symphony orchestra erupts like a volcano in all directions, where can it culminate but in absolute emptiness? Additionally, the outlines of the finale's so-called swan theme are hidden within those final chords. I find the solution beautifully and ingeniously closes the circle of the symphony.
@@JackJohnsonNY Indeed. I think that the final chords of the symphony should not be conducted too quickly, to allow the listener time to grasp their motivic connection to the finale's prominent French horn theme.
I have no trouble with the end of the 5 th EXCEPT I don’t want it to end! Speaking of endings how about the beginning of the 2nd symphony? Best beginning to anything IMHO
VERY NICE VIDEO, DAVE.... Guess I was different, I started out with Sibelius's First Symphony. The recording with Ormandy and Philadelphia on Columbia (now Sony). As you pointed out Sibelius's Second Symphony begins as fragments and as a kid who didn't know nothing at the time, thought the music wasn't going anywhere. Boy, was I wrong. My favorite of this symphony is the other recording that George Szell did with The Concertgebouw on Philips (now Universal I believe). Can't disagree with anything you said about the other Sibelius works. En Saga and Pohjola's Daughter are masterpieces. THANKS DAVE !!!!
I think mature Sibelius is easy to like, but hard to understand. It's always gorgeous music, but it took me a long time before I felt like I had wrapped my head around his forms. They really do have a very different internal logic from most of the symphonic repertoire. For those with training, Hepokowski's book on the Fifth Symphony was an enormous help for me. I always got the sense that's why the avant-garde especially hated him. As much as they proclaimed to be fearlessly throwing out all that came before them, they still had very conservative ideas of how symphonies were supposed to be structured and developed. They couldn't make sense of his forms, and dismissed him as an amateur. No way would they admit that a tonal, Finnish (ie, non-German), popular (and even worse, popular among Americans!) composer had come up with a different, forward thinking approach that broke from the tradition.
My father used to complain that the Seventh Symphony simply moved too fast to keep up with. For me, its twenty-three minutes seem to cover more terrain than Mahler's Third.
Dave when you and I were young Sibelius was in the lowest critical esteem possible. Virgil Thomson raked him over the coals regularly. His centenary in 1965 passed without any interest. The other thing that is striking about Sibelius' critical esteem was it was very geographical. Sibelius was extremely popular and influential in England ( the Walton First Symphony and the Moeran Symphony were both described as Sibelius' 8th) and in the U.S. where critic Olin Downes was a major cheerleader. But he was a non-entity in German and France. I was just as bad misunderestimating Sibelius until my 60s. What did it was the Third Symphony, the incidental music to Swanwhite the tone poem Night Ride and Sunrise ( best sunrise ever IMHO!)and the gorgeous Christmas carol from his Opus 1 En Etsi Valtaa Loistoa.
Believe it or not, I was alive when Sibelius died, Vaughan-Williams also. I was 9 years old for Sibelius and 10 years old for Vaughan-Williams. Didn't get into classical music until my middle to late teens though. GLAD I DID !!! even though I feel so old.
Great list, as usual, for a composer that is a tough nut for some listeners to crack. Thanks also for the brief nod to Arthur Fiedler. He often took flack from purists, but many classical music lovers of my vintage found a lot to like in his work with the Boston Pops. Importantly, he brought more people into the classical fold, much to his credit.
Some titles of Sibelius works have been curiously translated by editors, and those translations still persist on CDs and concerts programs... 'Pohjolan Tytär' means indeed 'The Girl of the North', it is rather strange they didn't translate the word Pohjola, as if it was the name of a person... It is just a geographic direction, and 'The Girl of (or from) the North' is much more evocative and poetic. The same for the word 'saari' in Lemminkäinen. This is just the basic finnish word for an island... So 'Lemminkäinen ja saaren neidot' just translates as 'Lemminkäinen and the maidens of the island'. There is no special place named Saari at all, it is just an island somewhere without further precision... 'En Saga' is in fact a Swedish title (Sibelius mother tongue), it is 'Satu' in Finnish. 'En' is the indefinite article in Swedish and should be translated simply as 'A Saga' or 'A Story'.
Dave, the first classical music I ever heard as a small child was an album of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops playing Finlandia, the William Tell Overture, the Carmen Overture and Die Fledermaus Overture. I imprinted on all of it.
I'm very surprised you didn't reference your own superlative video devoted to Sibelius' Seventh Symphony--with audio samples, no less! That was the turning point for me regarding Sibelius. It was the first piece of his that really drew me in, since I have never warmed to Finlandia. (I once wrote to the local classical station, because they--rather, their algorithm--was waking me up several times a week with Finlandia. Happily, that did the trick.) I do occasionally buy Finlandia brand butter.
I still remember the day I found out how young Sibelius was when he decided to stop composing. I was devastated. I really don’t know how he spent the last Few decades of his life without composing.
Elgar, Ives, Rossini and the madrigalist John Wilby all inexplicably stopped composing in heavy age. Sibelius was not careful about his finances so the cynic in me might think his financial security might have something to do with it. But there must have been more to the silence from Jarven pää
Thanks for bigging up my great compatriot. I hope you will do another one on more of the symphonies. Unusualy for a symphonist, none of his is a dud. As for the (unjustly underrated) Lemminkäinen: for future reference: "saari" just means "island". So it's just "maidens of/on the island".
