DE 3334 0 13491 33342 7 Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 105 1. in einem satze ( in one movement) (21:59) Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43 [45:17] 2. Allegretto (10:17) 3. Tempo Andante, ma rubato (13:52) 4. Vivacissimo (6:28) 5. Allegro moderato (14:41) TOTAL PLAYING TIME : 67:16 JAMES DEPREIST , CONDUCTOR OREGON SYMPHONY Symphony No. 2 was recorded Live in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon, September 21–23, 2002 Executive Producers: Amelia S. Haygood, Carol Rosenberger DSD Editing and Mixing: Sony Sonoma Audio Workstation Recording Producer: Michael Fine Monitor Loudspeakers (recording): B & W Nautilus 805, Recording Engineer: Jeff Mee JBL LSR 28; (post-production): JBL 250Ti / LSR 28 Associate Engineer: Andrés Villalta Microphones: Sennheiser MKH series, THIS RECORDING WAS MADE POSSIBLE Assistant Engineer: Chris Landen Neumann KM184, AKG 451 Editing: Andrés Villalta Console: Spirit LX7 THROUGH THE GRETCHEN BROOKS Production Assistant: Tamra Saylor Fine DePreist Photos: C. Bruce Forster RECORDING FUND FOR THE OREGON SYMPHONY Recorded – Symphony No. 2: Live in Concert September 21–23, 2002, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland, Oregon; Creative Direction: Harry Pack, Tri Arts and Associates Symphony No. 7: June 10, 2003, Baumann Auditorium, Graphics: Mark Evans George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon Special thanks: Michael Johnson & the technical staff of the DSD Processing: Emm Labs ADC 8 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. 7 & W 2004 Delos Productions, Inc., P.O. Box 343, Sonoma, California 95476-9998 (707) 996-3844 • Fax (707) 320-0600 • (800) 364-0645 • Made in USA • www.delosmusic.com NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43 new wave of Russian oppression — since 1809, Finland had been an autonomous Grand Duchy under the Tsar If it was Gustav Mahler whose musical and psychologi - — Finlandia eloquently articulated the Finnish yearning cal excesses helped hasten the final decline and glorious for political independence and transformed its composer death of the late-Romantic symphony, then it was the into a national hero. austere and fastidious Jean Sibelius who strove more Something of the intense national feeling which ani - gallantly than any composer of his era to keep the mated Finlandia can also be heard in the D Major sym - doomed form alive. For just as Mahler’s symphonies phony. In fact, Sibelius’s friend, the conductor Georg became increasingly diffuse and expansive, moving Schnéevoigt, always insisted the work had been written ever further from those Classical ideals of balance, con - to a specific patriotic program. The first movement, ac - cision, and cumulative containment which had made cording to Schnéevoigt, was a portrait of the peaceful symphonic form possible in the first place, Sibelius, to - Finnish countryside, as yet untouched by the brutal ward the end of his career, sought an ever-increasing Russian rule which, in the second movement, has trans - severity of style and economy of expression. His final formed the formerly proud people into a race of compli - symphony, the Seventh, is not only a tersely expressive ant sheep. The third movement represents the gradual 20-minute structure whose principal theme is the C awakening of the Finnish spirit which, in the finale , major scale, but also is a work which would fit comfort - bursts forth in a great hymn of national pride. ably within almost any movement of any of Mahler’s Although Sibelius himself did nothing to discourage final works in the form. such speculation, that the Symphony may have been Sibelius began what would become the most popular written to an entirely different sort of program is sug - of his symphonies during the Spring of 1901 while on gested by a series of cryptic notes to be found in the holiday in Italy. At the age of thirty-six, he was already composer’s sketch books. In one of them, Sibelius re - recognized as Finland’s foremost composer. On July 2, counts a vision he had in the garden of his rented villa 1900, the Helsinki premiere of the tone poem Finlandia in Rapallo, a vision inspired by Mozart’s Don Giovanni : had created a sensation. Written in 1899 in response to a “…in the twilight in my palace, a guest (a statue) comes in. I ask more than once who he is. — No answer. I try tively simple-sounding series of chords over which the to amuse him. He remains silent. Finally the stranger oboes and clarinets warble a naive, folk-like tune, the starts to sing. Then Don Giovanni recognizes who he movement is in truth one of the most complex in the is.” On the very next page of the sketchbook, the com - composer’s entire output. Instead of presenting the two poser jotted down what would become the principal or three principal themes common to the outer move - theme of the D Major Symphony’s second movement, ments of the Classical symphony, Sibelius follows the ex - with the note: “In the enchanted Garden when Don Gio - ample of his admired Bruckner and introduces a series vanni is away.” A second, chorale-like theme, written in of thematic clusters containing, in all, more than a dozen Florence, is simply called “Christ.” often radically disparate musical ideas which at first Whatever bearing any of this may have had on the seem to have little to do with one another. The ingen - actual shape and content of the Second Symphony or the ious, rigorously worked-out development section clari - extent to which the work is a nationalistic parable or fies the hidden relationships among the various themes something even more grandiose is impossible to say. and motives, as does the recapitulation, which, in an - From his earliest years as a composer, Sibelius was per - other technique adapted from Bruckner, actually begins suaded that all music needed to be written to an implied before the development has been completed. The overall or explicit program, and whatever its specific program - mood of the movement is relaxed and bucolic, which matic underpinnings might have been, the Second Sym - perhaps reflects its genesis in an Italian garden. phony is one of the most direct, dramatic and Following an ominous tympani rumble, the darkly emotionally demonstrative of all Sibelius’s works. At the dramatic slow movement begins with a hushed pizzi - height of the composer’s popularity in the 1930s and cato figure in the cellos and basses which becomes the ’40s, it was played nearly as often as the Fifth Symphony accompaniment to a lugubrious modal lament for the of Beethoven, and in spite of nay-sayers such as Virgil bassoons. A series of increasingly powerful brass cli - Thomson, who found it “vulgar, self-indulgent, and maxes leads to the chorale-like “Christ” figure, first provincial beyond all description,” it has remained heard in the strings. The remainder of the movement is Sibelius’s most frequently performed symphony to the taken up by a struggle between these two irreconcilable present day. forces, a struggle which the Sibelius biographer Erik Fu - Although the opening Allegretto begins with a decep - ruhjelm saw as the composer’s attempt to “tear himself violently free from the oppressive bonds of pessimism.” remaining 28 years of his life. (Rumors of an Eighth Judging from the movement’s somber conclusion, the at - Symphony persisted until the early 1950s, rumors that tempt was not a conspicuous success. were fueled by the composer himself, who promised The Symphony’s scherzo begins with a scurrying the honor of the first performance to Serge Kousse - string figure punctuated by angry outbursts from the vitzky, Sir Thomas Beecham and two or three of his brass. Introduced by five barely audible tympani beats, other favorite conductors.) the lyrical trio section is dominated by a plaintive oboe Although Sibelius lived to be 91, the chronic alco - melody which begins with nine repetitions of the same holism and other medical problems from which he suf - note. As the stormy music of the scherzo returns, a fered certainly must have been factors in his premature thrilling new idea which first appears in the horns be - retirement. In 1901, he endured his first major crisis, a comes the principal theme of the majestic finale , which serious disease of the inner ear which might well have follows without pause. Driven by the trombones and resulted in total deafness. Two years later, a lump in his capped by brazen trumpet fanfares, this great striding throat was diagnosed — incorrectly, in turned out — as tune is followed by a second, march-like subject accom - cancer. Not surprisingly, his mood as well as his music panied by a restless ostinato figure in the lower strings. — beginning with the stygian Valse Triste — grew in - Following a dramatic development of both ideas, the creasingly dark and pessimistic, a process which can be first three notes of the principal theme becomes the heard to continue in much of the music he produced basis of the heroic coda , which gradually swells from the during the rest of his creative life. deepest recesses of the orchestra and ends in a blaze of Sibelius started thinking about his Seventh Sym - triumph and hope. phony at the same time he began sketching the Fifth and the Sixth. In a letter from 1918, the composer described Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 105 his overall plan: “The VIIth Symphony. Joy of life and vi - tality, with appassionato passages. In 3 movements — One of the more perplexing mysteries of 20th century the last a ‘Hellenic’ rondo. It looks as if I were to come music is the three-decade silence of Jean Sibelius. He out with three symphonies at the same time.