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Wednesday 3 February Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 (1901–2) 1 Allegretto 2 Tempo andante, ma rubato 3 Vivacissimo – 4 Finale: Allegro moderato Sketches for the Second Symphony date back to Sibelius’s visit to Italy in early 1901. At the time he was contemplating various ambitious projects, none of which would come to fruition, including a four-movement tone-poem based on the Don Juan story and a setting of Dante’s Divina Commedia. His sketched ideas found their way instead into the slow movement of the symphony. The trip to Italy had come about at the suggestion of Sibelius’s friend, the amateur musician Axel Carpelan, who around this time raised money to allow Sibelius to relinquish his duties at the Helsinki Conservatoire and devote himself to the composition of the Second Symphony. When the composer returned to Finland for the summer and autumn of 1901, he still found the task an arduous one, but the work was essentially complete by November. Extensive revisions delayed the first performance (in Helsinki under the composer’s direction) first to January the following year, then again to 8 March. From that moment on, however, the symphony enjoyed unparalleled success in Finland, and it was soon to provide Sibelius with a major breakthrough in Germany, the kind of thing many Scandinavian composers (including Sibelius’s exact contemporary in Denmark, Carl Nielsen) craved, yet never achieved. Early reactions to the symphony read into it a portrayal of Finnish resistance to Russification. The country had indeed been under Russian rule since 1809, and the dispensation under the last of the Romanov tsars was far from liberal. Sibelius was certainly a good patriot and happy to voice his solidarity with national aspirations; and the defiant-heroic tone of his finale seems to invite extra-musical interpretation on these lines. Yet when Finnish commentators persisted as late as 1945 in writing of this as a ‘Liberation Symphony’, he issued emphatic disclaimers. What defines the originality of the work, and arguably has helped it retain its extraordinary popularity, is something more abstract, yet ultimately more potent, than any hypothetical political message, namely its exploratory 6
Wednesday 3 February attitude to musical motion. This is at its most striking in the moderately paced first movement, which poses all sorts of questions and therefore offers conductors considerable latitude in interpretation. Is the very opening an accompaniment or a theme, for example? Is its basic pulse defined by the steadily throbbing crotchets or by their broader melodic ascent? As the music unfolds, where are the main points of structural articulation, apart from the extremely characteristic theme (first heard on declamatory woodwind) beginning with a long held note and ending in a flurry of short ones? Leaving all these issues undecided, the music evolves in an improvisatory succession of moods, rarely emotional or dramatic on the surface, but all in a state of becoming and carried along as though by forces of nature. The two central movements are again remarkable for their economy of means and concealed structural energy. The dark-hued slow movement is built around an introspective melody for bassoons (marked ‘lugubriously’) and quiet, chorale-like phrases in the strings, those ideas being spaced by more of the accelerations that have already marked the first movement. The scherzo then contrasts a whirlwind of agitated stringwriting with a heartfelt trio section led off by the oboe; displaying a fine instinct for symphonic proportion, Sibelius curtails this trio, so that its recurrence after the repeat of the scherzo will not sound jaded. Even more effectively, this recurrence leads straight on to the finale rather than back to a final statement of the scherzo – in broad terms following the model of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Now the redemptive tone promised by the quasi-religious ideas of the slow movement at last comes out into the open. And while the finale itself may be open to criticism for its relatively conventional imagery and structure, it is nothing if not bold in its attempt to measure up to Beethovenian (and other) precedents. Programme note © David Fanning 7
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Wednesday 3 February<br />
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)<br />
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 (1901–2)<br />
1 Allegretto<br />
2 Tempo andante, ma rubato<br />
3 Vivacissimo –<br />
4 Finale: Allegro moderato<br />
Sketches for the Second Symphony date back to Sibelius’s<br />
visit to Italy in early 1901. At the time he was contemplating<br />
various ambitious projects, none of which would come to<br />
fruition, including a four-movement tone-poem based on the<br />
Don Juan story and a setting of Dante’s Divina Commedia.<br />
His sketched ideas found their way instead into the slow<br />
movement of the symphony.<br />
The trip to Italy had come about at the suggestion of<br />
Sibelius’s friend, the amateur musician Axel Carpelan, who<br />
around this time raised money to allow Sibelius to relinquish<br />
his duties at the Helsinki Conservatoire and devote himself<br />
to the composition of the Second Symphony. When the<br />
composer returned to Finland for the summer and autumn<br />
of 1901, he still found the task an arduous one, but the work<br />
was essentially complete by November. Extensive revisions<br />
delayed the first performance (in Helsinki under the<br />
composer’s direction) first to January the following year, then<br />
again to 8 March. From that moment on, however, the<br />
symphony enjoyed unparalleled success in Finland, and it<br />
was soon to provide Sibelius with a major breakthrough in<br />
Germany, the kind of thing many Scandinavian composers<br />
(including Sibelius’s exact contemporary in Denmark, Carl<br />
Nielsen) craved, yet never achieved.<br />
Early reactions to the symphony read into it a portrayal of<br />
Finnish resistance to Russification. The country had indeed<br />
been under Russian rule since 1809, and the dispensation<br />
under the last of the Romanov tsars was far from liberal.<br />
Sibelius was certainly a good patriot and happy to voice his<br />
solidarity with national aspirations; and the defiant-heroic<br />
tone of his finale seems to invite extra-musical interpretation<br />
on these lines. Yet when Finnish commentators persisted as<br />
late as 1945 in writing of this as a ‘Liberation Symphony’, he<br />
issued emphatic disclaimers.<br />
What defines the originality of the work, and arguably has<br />
helped it retain its extraordinary popularity, is something<br />
more abstract, yet ultimately more potent, than any<br />
hypothetical political message, namely its exploratory<br />
6
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