A ‘Sibelius cigar’” came in boxes “adorned with ‘a good likeness of our celebrated composer.’” Mahler’s introduction to Sibelius’s work was nothing short of disastrous: he attended a “popular concert” of the Helsinki Philharmonic that included Sibelius’s Spring Song, with an encore of Valse triste.
SIBELIUS 5 ANALYSIS FULL
Helsinki shops “were full of Sibelius’s picture. At the time of Mahler’s arrival, Sibelius was already a national hero. Mahler visited Helsinki, in October of 1907-a month too late to hear Sibelius conduct the premiere of his Third Symphony-and conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic in a hefty program of Beethoven and Wagner. No portly hairless establishment icon this, but a fiercely electric, magnificently maned Don Quixote. Although their fundamentalist regimen probably served to hone an unruly youth’s technical skills, political, intellectual, and emotional currents fanned the creative fires in a young composer whom companions regularly described as impassioned, volcanic, fiery. burst forth after a strict diet of contrapuntal exercises, chamber works, and Lutheran discipline force-fed by Martin Wegelius and Albert Becker. Glenda Dawn Goss described this “first musical venture into Kalevala territory” as having After all, his first large orchestral work, Kullervo, was inspired by and steeped in the Finnish Kalevala folklore and myths. Sibelius to Jussi Jalas, 18th June 1940Īs Gustav Mahler had in his Fourth Symphony, Jean Sibelius in his Third Symphony turned away from heady Romantic expressiveness toward the structural elegance of Mozart’s and Hadyn’s Classical mode. Complexities and conundrums abound when thinking about Sibelius’s trajectory toward this “Classical” symphonic moment. Jean Sibelius, standing at the fireplace at Ainola (1907)Īfter hearing my third symphony Rimsky-Korsakov shook his head and said: “Why don’t you do it the usual way you will see that the audience can neither follow nor understand this.” And now I am certain that my symphonies are played more than his.