![]() ![]() Groundswells of brass and drums, rocking figures throughout the orchestra, somehow seem relevant to the Nordic land- and seascape. Woodwinds frequently undulate in pairs, birdlike. 7 (1924).Īt the same time, a sense of geography informs the symphonies: Sibelius’s writing for the strings can be biting and jagged on the one hand, open and ethereal on the other. Other tone poems would include the four episodes of the Lemminkäinen Suite (begun in 1895 The Swan of Tuonela is the third of these), Finlandia (1900), Pohjola’s Daughter (1906, based on the same segment of the Kalevala that inspired an aborted operatic project about ten years earlier), and, much later, Tapiola (1926), the only major orchestral work to follow his last symphony, No. Shortly after that, Sibelius wrote the Karelia Suite for an historical pageant at the University of Helsingfors. Soon after this came the symphonic poem En Saga, written for Robert Kajanus, conductor of the Finnish National Orchestra. ![]() On April 28, 1892, the first performance of the twenty-six-year-old composer’s eighty-minute-long symphonic poem Kullervo for soloists, male chorus, and orchestra proved something of a national event. In the spring of 1889, in his last days as a student at the Helsinki Conservatory, Sibelius was named “foremost amongst those who have been entrusted with bearing the banner of Finnish music” by the influential Finnish critic Karl Flodin. Perhaps it is the elemental nature of his music that explains the composer’s international popularity even during his own lifetime: the basic impulse strikes home entirely without our needing to analyze his achievement. Years later, as he observed in his diaries, the beauties of the land near his country estate in Järvenpää, the small country village, northeast of Helsinki, to which he moved in 1904, helped distract him from the atrocities of civil war that ravaged Finland in the final phase of its struggle against Russia at the close of World War I. As a young violin student, he would spend hours improvising on the instrument while wandering in the woods or by the lake near his family’s quiet home in Finland’s interior. His earliest piece, for violin and cello pizzicato, was called Waterdrops. Sibelius’s affinity for his country’s land and folklore is apparent in his music from the start. The score of the Seventh Symphony calls for 2 each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses). First BSO performances: December 1926, Serge Koussevitzky conducting.First performance: March 24, 1924, in Stockholm, Jean Sibelius conducting.Composer's life: Born December 8, 1865, at Tavastehus (Hämeenlinna), Finland died September 20, 1957, at Järvenpää, near Helsinki. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |