No. 2068 Subscription (Program C)

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) left his double mark on music history, as an important symphonist following the pan-European tradition and as the establisher of the Finnish national identity in music. He left us seven completed symphonies and one concerto (discussed below), while in the field of the symphonic (tone) poem, he derived inspiration from the country’s nature, history or literature to create masterpieces including Four Legends from the Kalevala (Lemminkäinen Suite) premiered in 1896 and Finlandia (1899/1900).
Sibelius established his international reputation during his lifetime and passed away in 1957 at age 91. Unexpectedly, his last major work Tapiola was composed as early as in 1926. He then bowed himself out of full-blown creative activities for thirty odd years, during which he famously burned the manuscript of his unfinished Symphony No. 8 through self-criticism.
Performed today, the version for string orchestra (with timpani as an option) of Andante festivo (Festive Andante) dates from this retreat period. It was originally a string quartet written in 1922 as a commission to mark the anniversary of a sawmill in Finland. He re-orchestrated the work for string orchestra in 1938 to conduct it the following year for a radio broadcast (Sibelius’s only existing recording of his own work). This single-movement piece is, contrary to the title, of awe-inspiring solemnity. The placid main theme given at the start in G major recurs in various forms, and the piece concludes in a plagal “Amen” cadence like a hymn.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) bloomed relatively late as a composer. Born in Finland, then a part of the Russian Empire, he received only a few piano lessons when he was around 7 and began to get violin training at age 15. He soon formed a trio at home with his siblings and started to play in a string quartet. The young violinist made quick progress, whilst a harmony book given to sixteen-year-old Sibelius as a gift in the summer of 1882 led to the composition of one of his earliest works.
Sibelius studied violin further at the Helsinki Music Institute from 1885 to 1889, taking private composition lessons. He then honed his composition skills in Berlin and Vienna. According to a well-known anecdote, he didn’t pursue a concert violinist career because of, besides his blossoming talent for composition, an intense stage fright he suffered from.
The Violin Concerto in D minor is the only concerto the prolific composer left us. It was completed in 1904 between the Symphony No. 2 (1901) and No. 3 (1907). Following the 1904 premiere conducted by the composer and some additional performances receiving mixed reviews, he revised it in 1905.
Sibelius’ Violin Concerto is abundant in unconventional approaches to the genre. Not surprisingly, the capable-violinist composer fills the solo part with highly demanding techniques such as the double or triple stops (playing two or three notes simultaneously). Meanwhile, Sibelius attaches the same weight to the soloist and the orchestra to create a finely designed symphonic architecture. The first movement of considerable length is in flexible sonata form with three themes. Against our expectation, the soloist doesn’t give a grand cadenza (a virtuosic solo without orchestra) towards the end but in the middle of the movement immediately after the exposition of the themes. The lyrical second movement in A–B–A form is followed by the finale, a vigorously folkish rondo with the rhythmical main theme introduced by the violin solo at the beginning.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Russian composer Sergei Rakhmaninov (1873–1943) passed away in exile in California, USA, in 1943 during the height of World War II. His reliance on the Western 19th-century Romantic idioms was always unswerving until his final compositional phase, as shown in his last work Symphonic Dances (1940). In fact, he followed the footsteps of his idol Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) who trained Anton Arensky (1861–1906), Rakhmaninov’s harmony teacher. Music history textbooks have often contrasted Rakhmaninov with his two progressive compatriots, Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915), his schoolfellow who created the so-called “mystic chord”, and Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) whose different styles were invariably ahead of the curve.
Born into a Russian noble family, Rakhmaninov composed the Symphony No. 1 (1895) and No. 2 (1907) before he bid an eternal farewell to his motherland following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Like the cliché, his life was stranger than fiction. With all his possessions left behind and at the risk of his life, he departed Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) for good with his wife, two daughters and only a few scores. They arrived in Stockholm via Finland, and then lived in Copenhagen for some time. Having a family to support abroad, from then he devoted himself to appear on concert stages going back and forth between Europe and USA as one of the greatest pianists of the century.
The Symphony No. 3 is hence one of only six opus-numbered works the busy piano virtuoso wrote during a quarter of a century of his life in exile. It was composed in 1935–1936 mostly at the Villa Senar that he built on Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, and named so after the couple’s names Sergei and Natal’ya Rakhmaninov. It is not hard to imagine that the stunning view and the silence the villa offered to him greatly inspired his pen. The piece had its premiere in 1936 in Philadelphia, USA, under the direction of Leopold Stokowski.
The Symphony No. 3 is profoundly Romantic as with Rakhmaninov’s two pre-exile symphonies. However, it also shows his pursuit of rhythmical vibrancy characteristic of his later compositions. Before the main sonata vigorously bursts into, the opening movement has a brief melancholic introduction revealing a motif reminiscent of the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) melody (mentioned later). This motif will be reused at pivotal points of the entire work as a unifying element. The symphony is atypically in three movements, notwithstanding the slow second movement in C-sharp minor has the scherzo-like section with buoyant rhythms midway. Commonly known is that during the valiant final movement, the Dies Irae melody from the Catholic Mass for the Dead is heard more distinctly. Symbolic of death and/or resurrection, the melody is famously present in the composer’s many works including the Symphonies No. 1 and No. 2.

[Kumiko Nishi]