An acquaintance with Sib
Sunday musical excursion #53
Image: Sibelius about three or five years after he composed his first symphony (circa 1899).1
It is a Finnish piece of music, by that country’s best-known and national composer, Johan (or Jean, as he was known) Sibelius: his first symphony, written when he was in his mid-30s. It is quiet, and it is loud, and it is glorious, and it is heart-rending. The linked performance is conducted by an American: Leonard Bernstein, directing the Vienna Philharmonic. The camera rests upon him at various junctures, especially the emotional portions of the final movement of this four-movement symphony. You can project onto those parts that sound like a cacophony such ideas as suggest themselves to you as a cacophony of solicitude. And you can project onto the exquisite woodwind solos and the passages of quiet reflection such sentiments of quiet reflection as seep into your soul at that point. They say that real cookery involves getting your hands dirty by plunging them into the mixing bowl, never mind the wooden spoon. Well, Bernstein does real conducting, leaving the baton aside, and with his bare hands massaging the emotion out of his players.
It’s shortish—just (all but) 43 minutes (Sibelius wrote it to be played in about 35, in fact). The opening clarinet solo almost recalls the opening phrase of The Godfather soundtrack. Aficionados will recognise some of the phrasing from Lemminkäinen and others of Sibelius’s tone poems. It’s all very him.
His life was divided into three thirds, roughly, with his symphonies forming the core of his œuvre. This first symphonic work dates from 1899, when he was 34 (or 35 after revising the score). His last, seventh, symphony was written in 1924, and he would die 31 years later, in 1957. But he wrote as good as nothing in the last 30 years of his life, after 1926. The reason is simple, as he himself put it: he was exhausted, and he had written enough. And, for this Sunday, so have I.
If you know Sib’s first, I think you’ll enjoy this performance. If you don’t yet know it, now’s the time to make its acquaintance.
By Photographerː Daniel Nyblin - Finnish Heritage Agency (https://www.finna.fi/Record/museovirasto.A8E6479FF4F05766140AC5E72E597113?sid=2910393193), CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=156423354.