1000 YEARS OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

SIBELIUS Symphonies 2 & 7

VOLUME 71 | THE MODERN ERA FAST FACTS

• is ’s most famous composer. He was so valued by his country that it paid him a yearly salary so that he could dedicate himself to writing music.

• Finland had been part of the Russian Empire since 1809, but in the 1890s there was a growing desire for SIBELIUS autonomy and a strong sense of national pride. Sibelius wrote the Finlandia in 1899 as Symphonies 2 & 7 part of a gala celebration affi rming Finland’s history; its music seems to trace a journey from darkness to light, and the piece was quickly taken up as a symbol of Finnish independence. (The country did fi nally Finlandia become an independent nation in 1917.) JEAN SIBELIUS 1865–1957 • Sibelius wrote several other symphonic poems with an explicitly nationalist agenda, drawing inspiration  SymphonyNo.2inDmajor,Op.43 [42’50] from Finnish folk legends. His symphonies, though, were not meant to tell any particular story: they are 1 I. Allegretto 8’59 intended to be enjoyed purely for the music they contain. Even so, many people feel that his Second 2 II. Tempo andante, ma rubato 14’36 Symphony has a patriotic ‘message’ in its triumphantly optimistic fi nale. 3 III. Vivacissimo – Lento e suave 5’46 4 IV. Finale (Allegro moderato) 13’13 • Symphonies are usually written in several movements (traditionally, four), each in a distinct mood. Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony is in just one movement, weaving together a wide range of emotions from dancing joy 5 SymphonyNo.7inCmajor,Op.105 19’42 to grave solemnity, before fi nishing in a blaze of glory from the brass instruments. 6 Finlandia,Op.26 8’16

Total Playing Time 71’09

Adelaide Symphony Arvo Volmer conductor • Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi sends the fi rst international wireless message, from Wimereux on the French coast across the Channel to South Foreland Lighthouse, near Dover, in England. • The drug Aspirin is patented by Felix Hoffmann, an employee of the German company Bayer; it is initially sold as a powder supplied in glass bottles. • Birth of Ernest Hemingway, Noël Coward, Humphrey Bogart, Duke Ellington and Fred Astaire. • Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness is fi rst published, as a serial in Blackwood’s 1899 Magazine. • The leaders of six Australian colonies meet to discuss coming together as a single country; they agree that the nation’s capital should be located between Sydney and Melbourne. • And in Finland, Jean Sibelius writes the patriotic orchestral work Finlandia.

— 2 — Symphony No. 2 had to be twice postponed. Sibelius himself conducted these first performances in March 1902, at which the work was an immediate success. ‘It is as if the Almighty had thrown down pieces of a mosaic from Heaven’s floor and asked me to put them together.’ Sibelius’s description of his process of symphonic composition might refer specifically to the first The symphony’s initial theme might be called unassuming – a simple rising and falling 11-note figure for the movement of his Second Symphony, which exemplifies the notion of a series of fragments being drawn strings. It is one of those rhythmic ideas Sibelius contrives to behave like a tune, and soon blossoms into one, together to create a coherent musical unit. a pastoral theme given to the woodwinds. The horns then give out a slower, more lyrical version of the idea. Soon we encounter a more passionate, wide-ranging tune for the strings, punctuated by long pauses, and a This was once considered an unusual approach to the use of symphonic structure, but no longer seems theme for the woodwind emerging from a note held for nearly four bars. There is also a marvellous sequential so because the popularity of this symphony long ago tamed whatever strangeness it once possessed. This theme for the strings, played pizzicato. opening movement would have sounded unusual to audiences used to the symphonic writing of Brahms or Dvofiák. In most of their symphonic first movements, they present a series of themes in the opening minutes These individual thematic events are gradually dovetailed, superimposed and juxtaposed as Sibelius brings them (the exposition). In the following section, the themes are broken up and re-examined (the development), before closer together. And this is the meaning and purpose of this music: the creation of a logical musical argument their primacy is re-asserted at the movement’s conclusion (the recapitulation). out of the seemingly disparate fragments he at first presented to us. Where Sibelius’s tone poems are often descriptive, or at least based on external narratives, the drama here is all in the music. In the opening Allegretto of his Second Symphony, Sibelius approaches this structure in a manner that was to be characteristic of his later work, but new for him at this point: he presents us with a series of fragmentary The movement climaxes in the development section – remember, this was unusual for a symphony at this musical ideas at the outset then uses the development section to illustrate their capacity for unity. In the time – after which the musical texture is gradually filleted away until all that is left is the theme-like rhythm movement’s final minutes, he draws the ideas apart again until they are reduced to their essentials. with which the movement began.

Much of the literature about this work is focused on Sibelius’s achievements in this movement, which have The striking opening of the second movement – a roll followed by the pizzicato tread of lower strings – obscured the many other facets of the work that mark it out as transitional rather than radical. However, we is followed by a haunting chant-like figure markedlugubre , played by the . This is the dark world see the future Sibelius in his telescoping of the third movement into the fourth. Here he re-shapes symphonic Sibelius was to explore more fully in his Fourth Symphony. A feverish transformation of this theme externals in a manner that would also contribute to the distinctiveness of his later symphonies. leads to a passage of great intensity. The brass writing is notably dark and craggy, with particularly telling music for the . (This is the last time he would use But there are many other ways in which the work is linked strongly to its predecessor. In his wildly successful this instrument in a symphony.) The coda is First Symphony, Sibelius had taken the language of Tchaikovsky and the Romantic nationalists and put his magnificently bleak and abrupt. own stamp on it. Much of the Second Symphony inhabits the same emotional territory: in terms of strong feeling, the opening movement is not as significant as the andante which follows; in its powerful extremes of The Vivacissimo movement contains two striking expression, this is the work’s centre of gravity. Likewise, a Romantic fervour dominates the mood of the Finale. ideas: the scurrying string theme at the outset that suggests Bruckner while being far more At the conclusion of the work, it is possible to feel that the ‘darkness to light’ progression of the musical fleet-footed, and a wonderfully lyrical idea – events must be ‘about’ something. Sibelius was already a national figure at this time, and an artist of some commencing with nine repeated notes – first international standing: , the First Symphony, The Swan of , Finlandia and the King Christian heard on the and which soon bursts forth music were finding increasing success in Europe and the United States. With Finland in the middle of a political passionately on the strings. crisis caused by Russian claims on the country’s independence, a bold new symphony by a famous compatriot that concluded, so to speak, with the scent of victory in its nostrils, was bound to create the impression that it The first two movements have ended quietly. was a portrayal of Finland’s struggle to assert its identity. Now Sibelius ends his Vivacissimo by linking it directly to the Finale. A rocking three-note Sibelius rejected all attempts by his well-meaning champions to project a nationalist agenda onto the music. figure forms a bridge to the final movement, His methodology, particularly in the symphony’s first half, is subtle and intricate, and does not suggest itself as and then turns out to be its main theme, the work of someone out to write musical propaganda. His evident ability to strike out on a distinctive artistic played out over a grinding accompaniment, path of his own is indication enough that he was not interested in becoming the popular musical face of Finnish and followed by heroic fanfares. A . As Sibelius’s most authoritative biographer, Erik Tawaststjerna, put it: ‘His conviction that the time wonderfully harmonised woodwind theme for national-romantic symphonies was drawing to an end was growing. One might say that Sibelius experienced is then transformed into a lyrical passage for the romantic crisis intuitively.’ the upper strings. The atmosphere of pomp, It was a trip to Italy in February 1901 that got him going on the composition of the Second Symphony. His ceremony and high-flown romance is interrupted mentor and patron, Axel Carpelan, felt the composer had sat at home long enough and that Italy would inspire only by a wistful woodwind theme given over a him as it had inspired Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss before him. The composer used his Italian sojourn, murmuring accompaniment by the lower strings. spent mostly in Rapallo, to begin sketches for a piece based on the exploits of Don Juan, and created other The sense of triumph renews itself, however, material for a four-movement symphonic fantasy. by way of exhaustive sequential development, and the symphony ends with grand rhetorical On returning home Sibelius realised that it was no symphonic fantasy he was creating but a fully-fledged re-statements of the final three-note theme, Jean Sibelius in 1913. Photo by Daniel Nyblin, symphony. It caused him some difficulty. ‘I have been in the throes of a bitter struggle with this symphony. now joyous and resplendent. courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Now the picture is clearer and I am now proceeding under full sail. Soon I hope to have something to dedicate to you,’ he wrote to Carpelan in November 1901. But he continued to revise the work so that its premiere in

— 3 — Symphony No. 7 Finlandia

One of the hallmarks of Sibelius’s music is its powerful evocation of elemental spirits. From the darkness of If you listen to orchestral music with any frequency, Finlandia will have been inescapable. It was once a staple the river on which (1894) floats, to the cold forest of (1925), there is an intensity of concert programs, can still be heard frequently on radio and is usually the first piece on any CD called The of expression in Sibelius, a disdain for adornment and a casting-aside of all that is unnecessary to his purpose, Best of Sibelius. coupled with an obvious identification with the natural world. Sir Bernard Heinze used to recall that when he Given its ubiquity, it’s important to note that Finlandia is to Sibelius’s work what the Overture 1812 is to met Sibelius in the 1930s, the composer took the young conductor outside his house, embraced with a gesture Tchaikovsky’s: it was very much a ceremonial piece, written for a specific occasion, that somehow took on a the spectacular view, and said: ‘Here is my Second Symphony.’ This does not seem so fanciful an anecdote to life of its own. those who know Sibelius’s music well. In 1893 Sibelius had created music to accompany a pageant staged by the Viipuri Student Corporation at With his Seventh Symphony (1924), Sibelius made his last statement in the form. Rumours of an Eighth Helsinki University, containing scenes from Karelian history. The three numbers Sibelius extracted from this persisted until his death, but whatever existed of it – and evidence suggests that he may have completed music as his became one of his first big successes, and among the first of his at least the first movement – was destroyed, probably in the 1940s. In any case the Seventh is so grand a works to take his name beyond the Scandinavian countries. culmination of his symphonic achievements that it is hard to imagine how he might have followed it. Perhaps Sibelius came to feel this also. The circumstances of Finlandia’s composition are remarkably similar. The Press Pension Celebrations of November 1899 were a thinly disguised attempt to create a fighting fund in support of a free press, at a time Detailed analyses of Sibelius’s later music are always difficult because of the subtlety with which the composer when Finland’s Russian rulers were vigilantly watchful of expressions of nationalist sentiment. Yet in Finland, as lays his plans, but in the case of the Seventh Symphony the task is almost impossible. In this work descriptions in so many other ‘occupied territories’ in Europe, nationalism was in the air – and as the dawn of a new century of the natural world have been dissolved into a symphony that is itself elemental. Composer and critic Robert was near, an air of optimism too. Simpson has described it as being ‘like a great planet in orbit’, while the writer Bayan Northcott calls it ‘a single, gigantic wave’. The three-day Celebrations culminated in a gala performance which included a series of historical tableaux, staged to Sibelius’s music. There were six scenes in total, set in different periods of Finnish history, from Throughout its one-movement span, themes float into view and then dissolve almost imperceptibly into others, ancient times to the late 19th century. It was for the final one, called Finland Awakes!, that the piece we now while changes of tempo are so closely intertwined with the pattern of Sibelius’s harmonic and instrumental know as Finlandia was created. This tableau was described by a Finnish newspaper as follows: ideas that they cannot be isolated in words on a page, and convey a fraction of the experience of listening to the work in performance. The powers of darkness menacing Finland had not succeeded in their terrible threats. Finland awakes. [Of] the great men of the time that adorn the pages of history, [stories] are told…[and] the beginnings of elementary The Seventh is the most concentrated of Sibelius’s symphonies and the one that best illustrates his individual education and the first steam locomotive are all recorded. understanding of the relationship between mass and time. In his analysis of it, Sir Donald Tovey wrote that, most successfully of all post-Wagnerian symphonies, it reconciles the heroism of Wagner’s time-scale with Given the narrative Sibelius was setting out to illustrate in this music, it’s not difficult to read the snarling brass the need for cogent symphonic movement. Certainly the piece speaks of epic notions, but there is nothing fanfares which open Finlandia as ‘the powers of darkness’ (which to the work’s first audience would have been sprawling about it, and its ideas are shaped with high regard for their context. Russia under its then-current Czar, Nicholas II); the contrasting chorale-like woodwind figure which follows as a prayer for better times; and the rumbustious, -clashing Allegro – which forms the bulk of the work – as It is not at all a work written in sections. Unlike Schumann’s Fourth, for example, Sibelius’s Seventh is not the march of progress towards more enlightened times and, although this word could hardly be used for fear of four movements segued into one. It is more like a closely woven fabric on which incidental details serve as censorship, independence. component parts of the whole. It could be argued that there are elements of adagio and scherzo contained within its span, and there are indeed moments of rhythmic lightness and of grave portentousness, but these Following a concert performance of the tableaux music a month after the Press Pension event, Finlandia’s are not so isolated from the general flow of ideas that they might be identified as discrete movements of the success was assured. The work was also part of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s repertoire on a work. It could be called a genuine stream-of-consciousness symphony were it not so tightly organised. European tour which culminated in concerts at the 1900 Paris Exposition (Exposition Universelle). By then, Finlandia’s reputation as a flag-waver for Finnish patriotism had made the authorities nervous, so to avoid The work is anchored in the tonality of C, and after an introduction that moves from simplicity to dark splendour the possibility of ruffled Russian sensitivities, the work was called Vaterland or La Patrie once the Helsinki the main theme is announced by the first . This burnished statement is the pivot around which the Orchestra’s tour took them beyond Scandinavia. symphony revolves. As conductor Osmo Vänskä has said of this theme: ‘Like Sarastro in The Magic Flute, it is always the same.’ It is heard again in the centre of the work and yet again at its conclusion. As its first Even with a title of determined inoffensiveness, the work made a tremendous impact wherever it was played, announcement ends, the rising scale that opened the work is heard again, and we seem at this point to have and remains the composer’s best-known piece. Many years after its debut Sibelius, very much aware of the passed the threshold that takes us resolutely into the world of this symphony. work’s popularity, was moved to comment: ‘Why does this tone-poem catch on with the public? I suppose because of its plein air style. The themes on which it is based came to me directly. Pure inspiration.’ The Lisztian objective of a convincing musical structure based on the method of ‘transformation of themes’ is here realised, with each theme anticipating and recalling another, but occupying its own emotional sphere. At  Phillip Sametz one moment the spirit of the dance is summoned; at the next, the atmosphere is more troubled and dissonant, before Sibelius weaves these and other ideas in and around the final sublime tolling of the .

The symphony’s concentration of expression had a profound impact on composers in the United States particularly, and two important American symphonies, the First of Samuel Barber and the Third of Roy Harris, are clearly influenced by its combination of power and compression. It remains one of the greatest achievements in the history of symphonic music.

— 4 — 1000 YEARS OF CLASSICAL MUSIC THE ALBUM COLLECTION

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BAROQUE & BEFORE THE ROMANTIC ERA THE MODERN ERA 93 BARBER Adagio for Strings | Concerto 1 GREGORIAN CHANT 34 SCHUBERT ‘Trout’ Quintet 63 DEBUSSY Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune | 94 MUSIC FROM THE MOVIES 2 MEDIEVAL CHORAL MUSIC 35 SCHUBERT Symphony No. 8 ‘Unfinished’ La Mer 95 SCULTHORPE The Fifth Continent 3 SACRED MUSIC OF THE RENAISSANCE 36 BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique 64 DEBUSSY Preludes 96 TAKEMITSU Music for Orchestra 4 ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 37 MENDELSSOHN The Hebrides | 65 ELGAR Concerto | Sea Pictures 97 GÓRECKI Symphony of Sorrowful Songs 5 ITALIAN BAROQUE A Midsummer Night’s Dream 66 ELGAR Enigma Variations 98 GLASS | NYMAN Music for Solo 6 PURCELL 38 MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto | 67 HOLST The Planets 99 MUSIC OF AUSTRALIA 7 BIBER Rosary Sonatas Piano Concerto No. 2 68 MUSIC OF SPAIN 100 THE 21ST CENTURY 8 A. SCARLATTI Cantatas 39 CHOPIN Nocturnes 69 R. STRAUSS Four Last Songs 9 VIVALDI The Four Seasons 40 SCHUMANN Music for Solo Piano 70 SIBELIUS Violin Concerto 10 FRENCH BAROQUE 41 SCHUMANN Symphonies 71 SIBELIUS Symphonies 2 & 7 | Finlandia 11 PERGOLESI Stabat Mater 42 LISZT Years of Pilgrimage 72 RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 2 12 BACH Brandenburg Concertos 43 BIZET Arias and Overtures 73 RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 2 13 BACH Music for Cello | Music for Violin 44 BRAHMS A German Requiem 74 SATIE Gymnopédies 14 BACH Sacred Arias and Choruses 45 BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 75 RAVEL Bolero | Mother Goose 15 BACH Music for Keyboard 46 BRUCKNER Symphony No. 4 76 RAVEL Chamber Music 16 HANDEL Water Music | Music for the 47 VIENNESE WALTZES 77 RESPIGHI Pines of Rome Royal Fireworks 48 DVOŘÁK Cello Concerto 78 SCHOENBERG Pelleas und Melisande 17 HANDEL Messiah 49 DVOŘÁK Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’ 79 BARTÓK Concerto for Orchestra | 18 HANDEL Arias 50 GRIEG Music for Orchestra Violin Concerto No. 2 51 GRIEG Piano Concerto | Music for Solo Piano 80 STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring THE CLASSICAL ERA 52 TCHAIKOVSKY The Nutcracker 81 PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 3 19 C.P.E. BACH 53 TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto | 82 CANTELOUBE Songs of the Auvergne 20 HAYDN Music for Orchestra Piano Concerto No. 1 83 GRAINGER 21 HAYDN Arias 84 ORFF Carmina burana 22 MOZART Symphonies 40 & 41 54 WAGNER Arias 85 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending | 23 MOZART Piano Concertos 55 VERDI Arias, Choruses and Overtures 24 MOZART Arias 56 VERDI Requiem Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis 25 MOZART Requiem 57 SAINT-SAËNS Carnival of the Animals | 86 POULENC Organ Concerto | Music for Solo Piano 26 MOZART Concerto Symphony No. 3 ‘Organ’ 87 BRITTEN The Young Person’s Guide to the 27 BEETHOVEN String Quartets 58 MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition Orchestra | Four Sea Interludes 28 BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas 59 FAURÉ Requiem 88 COPLAND Appalachian Spring 29 BEETHOVEN Symphonies 3 & 5 60 PUCCINI Arias 89 RODRIGO Guitar Concertos 30 BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9 ‘Choral’ 61 MAHLER Symphony No. 4 90 GERSHWIN | BERNSTEIN 31 BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos 62 MAHLER Symphony No. 5 91 SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 8 32 HUMMEL 92 MESSIAEN Turangalîla-Symphonie 33 ROSSINI Arias and Overtures

— 5 — ABC Classics Executive Producer Toby Chadd 1000 YEARS OF CLASSICAL MUSIC Recording Producer, Editing and Mastering Thomas Grubb Recording Engineer Wayne Baker THE ERAS Assistant Recording Engineer Andrea Hensing Publications Editor Natalie Shea Cover Image MS Designs Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd BAROQUE & BEFORE c.1000 TO c.1750 Recorded 10–13 April 2007 in the Adelaide Town Hall. The age of the church and the court – with music from ancient chant to the treasures of the baroque, including Hildegard, Tallis, Symphony No. 2 and Finlandia are published by Breitkopf & Härtel. Symphony No. 7 is published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen. Monteverdi, Vivaldi, JS Bach and Handel. 1000 Years of Classical Music Project Concept Toby Chadd, Robert Patterson THE CLASSICAL ERA c.1750 TO c.1820 Executive Producer Toby Chadd

The era of innovation – the birth of the symphony, the arrival of the ABC Classics thanks Richard Buckham, Martin Buzacott, Matthew Dewey, Wendy McLeod, Ben Eliot Nielsen, Emma Paillas (ABC Classic FM), Michael Mason (ABC Radio), Steve Beck, Joshua Crowley, piano, the first concerts, and the towering geniuses of Ludwig van Caroline Kinny-Lewis (Digital Business Development, ABC Commercial), Lisa Hresc, Jillian Reeves Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (Marketing, ABC Commercial), Virginia Read, Sophie Fraser, Hamish Lane, James Limon, Natalie Waller and Robert Patterson. THE ROMANTIC ERA c.1820 TO c.1900 www.1000YearsofClassicalMusic.com Revolution, heroism and ambition – told in music through the www.abcclassics.com virtuosic concertos of Chopin, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, and P 2007 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. C 2016 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Digitally distributed worldwide by The Orchard. All rights the operas of Puccini, Verdi and Wagner. of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited. THE MODERN ERA c.1900 TO THE PRESENT

A world of fragmentation and a flourishing of diversity – from music born out of World War I to 21st-century Australia, via French Impressionism, Eastern European minimalism and American classics.

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