NEW RELEASE SPECIAL - SANTTU SPIRITU SIBELIUS!

[Alain Maréchal]

Sibelius Fourth? I like to agree with the critic who said it is if Sibelius is saying "no". In the great slow movement it feels like he has come right to the abyss , not to the land of Tuonela with some kind of an afterlife but staring right into the black hole of existence. In IV, I get the feelingthat he has somehow pulled out of that, but what awaits next? Not triumphal Beethovian glory, but a brief reprieve from one fate , a slight sigh of relief, but anxiety about the unknown...

I hear none of that. If I hear anything at all, and I prefer to hear music, not an imposed programme, I hear stoicism and a final calm resignation.

[Parry1912]

What Stravinsky actually said was....

Pity he didn’t read Deryck Cooke’s ‘The Language Of Music’

[jayne lee wilson]

I hear none of that. If I hear anything at all, and I prefer to hear music, not an imposed programme, I hear stoicism and a final calm resignation.

Sibelius himself called the 4th "a psychological symphony", and he had recently recovered from cancer and lived in fear of its recurrence. The tritone, the "diabolus in musica" dominates the work. Very good wiki background note here...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._4_(Sibelius)

I don't think rfg or I would try to "impose a programme" on this or any other work. But with so searing a statement as the 4th's largo, many listeners feel compelled to reflect upon its possible meanings and how it came about. The link between the work and the life does seem more obvious here.
Many of us experience sorrow, pain, and loss in our lives, which may lead us to identify with such music more intensely... or - shy away from it, push its message, the very sound of it, away...

"Darkness Visible" (lucus a non lucendo) does seem very apt. Our confrontation with Great Art is often a coming-to-terms, not least with ourselves.

***
Parry - my copy of The Language of Music became very dogeared, but I can't find it now. Of course you can call some of its insights and comments into question, but it offered me a deal of validation back in the day, about how classical music came across to me, and many insights...

[teamsaint]

I have just got around to listening to the new recording, under less than perfect conditions, and it very dramatically challenges your understanding of how the music can sound. Every phrase seems to have a surprising emphasis, or sit differently with adjacent elements than how you expect.in fact my strongest reaction was that this recording really requires ( for me) listening with a score, so dramatic are the interpretations.
Hoping to give it a better listen tonight, but at this stage probably without the score, as I don’t have one.

Great recommendation, Jayne.

[Parry1912]

Parry - my copy of The Language of Music became very dogeared, but I can't find it now.

Mine has a sherry stain

[Maclintick]

I'd agree with those who've commented that Sibelius 1 is in some respects a more interesting work than its immediate symphonic successor, & that in this new recording the resplendent Gothenburg SO & Rouvali provide a compelling account, though a mite more expansive than some other classic versions which insert more barkbröd in the diet. Hearing this symphony anew after a long abstinence made me aware of how it often foreshadows JS's later masterpieces in its allusions to the natural world or the supernatural milieu of the Kalevala -- that section in the first movt where pianissimo harp and woodwind transport us to Tapio's forest of magical sprites..or the turbulent passage in the slow movt pointing forward to the cataclysmic storms in The Oceanides, Tapiola or the incidental music to "The Tempest". The 1st Symphony's dénouement, as Alain Maréchal says, cannot represent anything other than stoicism in the face of tragedy, rendered starkly after the glorious restatement of that romantically Tchaikovskian theme & its abrupt cancellation. I kept hearing echoes of PT's "Manfred" Symphony in this finale...though none of the disappointingly lame ending of PT's original.

Truncated codas are something of a Sibelian speciality -- the emphatic C major QED at the end of the 3rd, the bald but insistent re-statement of the tonic in the 7th, or the six hammer-blows which bring down the curtain & perhaps signal the composer's distaste for inessentials or any kind of overblown rhodomontade at the culmination of the 5th. In contrast, when you consider the totality of Sibelius' output, it's notable how many of his works subside into silence, Symphonies 1, 4, 6, En Saga, 3 of the Legends, Luonnotar, Pohjola's Daughter, The Oceanides, Tapiola. Stories conjured out of silence, retreating into silence..

[Bryn]

Sibelius himself called the 4th "a psychological symphony", and he had recently recovered from cancer and lived in fear of its recurrence. The tritone, the "diabolus in musica" dominates the work. Very good wiki background note here...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._4_(Sibelius)

I don't think rfg or I would try to "impose a programme" on this or any other work. But with so searing a statement as the 4th's largo, many listeners feel compelled to reflect upon its possible meanings and how it came about. The link between the work and the life does seem more obvious here.
Many of us experience sorrow, pain, and loss in our lives, which may lead us to identify with such music more intensely... or - shy away from it, push its message, the very sound of it, away...

"Darkness Visible" (lucus a non lucendo) does seem very apt. Our confrontation with Great Art is often a coming-to-terms, not least with ourselves.

***
Parry - my copy of The Language of Music became very dogeared, but I can't find it now. Of course you can call some of its insights and comments into question, but it offered me a deal of validation back in the day, about how classical music came across to me, and many insights...

I have to admit I have never read or had a copy of The Language of Music (a situation soon to re rectified, care of WeBuy Books. The one reference to the tome I am familiar with is that by John Tilbury in the introduction to his critique of John Cage's Music of Changes, reproduced in Cardew's Stockhausen Serves Imperialism.

[jayne lee wilson]

I'd agree with those who've commented that Sibelius 1 is in some respects a more interesting work than its immediate symphonic successor, & that in this new recording the resplendent Gothenburg SO & Rouvali provide a compelling account, though a mite more expansive than some other classic versions which insert more barkbröd in the diet. Hearing this symphony anew after a long abstinence made me aware of how it often foreshadows JS's later masterpieces in its allusions to the natural world or the supernatural milieu of the Kalevala -- that section in the first movt where pianissimo harp and woodwind transport us to Tapio's forest of magical sprites..or the turbulent passage in the slow movt pointing forward to the cataclysmic storms in The Oceanides, Tapiola or the incidental music to "The Tempest". The 1st Symphony's dénouement, as Alain Maréchal says, cannot represent anything other than stoicism in the face of tragedy, rendered starkly after the glorious restatement of that romantically Tchaikovskian theme & its abrupt cancellation. I kept hearing echoes of PT's "Manfred" Symphony in this finale...though none of the disappointingly lame ending of PT's original.

Truncated codas are something of a Sibelian speciality -- the emphatic C major QED at the end of the 3rd, the bald but insistent re-statement of the tonic in the 7th, or the six hammer-blows which bring down the curtain & perhaps signal the composer's distaste for inessentials or any kind of overblown rhodomontade at the culmination of the 5th. In contrast, when you consider the totality of Sibelius' output, it's notable how many of his works subside into silence, Symphonies 1, 4, 6, En Saga, 3 of the Legends, Luonnotar, Pohjola's Daughter, The Oceanides, Tapiola. Stories conjured out of silence, retreating into silence..

Absolutely... yet how differently those silences sound in each case...
(I think Alain was referencing the 4th with regard to "stoicism in the face of tragedy".....)

Those codas are indeed concise, but they do follow unusually sustained climactic passages based on the main theme(s). As with the silences, they are all very distinct. In 3 and 6, they grow naturally from the preceding music, but in 1, 4, 5 and 7, I feel I'm waiting tensely to see what happens, how the story ends - they offer a final word on the symphony, a definitive comment upon it, an underlying truth made manifest.

[kea]

I'd love to hear other views on this....how would a listener characterise Sibelius 4 for example, as perhaps compared also to - the fearsome Haydn 44 & 52, Brahms 4, Tchaikovsky 6, Mahler 6....
Then you have strange ambiguities e.g. the Mozart D Minor Piano Concerto, whose suddenly brightened conclusion verges on the bipolar, and potentially tragic from quite another POV...

Sibelius 4 - for me an incredibly bleak piece of music in two halves (two movements each), the 2nd half being an expansion & development of the first, with each half beginning in utter darkness, rising to a kind of catharsis, passing through to the ordinary world of everyday life and then disintegrating and fragmenting into complete alienation. Ending is not so much tragic as without resolution—basically the beginning of a chorale that can't be completed. A lot of its mood is defined by long passages in the 2nd and 4th movements that consist of "aimless drifting"—also a big feature in the 3rd, 5th and 6th symphonies—for example here or here—music with a lot of surface motion that's essentially stuck in a harmonic/structural holding pattern and goes nowhere—and by the end this directionless activity has become untenable, and then even the directionless chorale fragments become untenable, and the music is reduced to just reiterations of the A minor triad.

Not his darkest piece of music—that's for me the 6th which I think of as a musical portrait of total depression and isolation, like being in a locked-in state, or being the last human being on earth. Probably more "existentialist" I guess.

[Nick Armstrong]

sharpened thematic profiles, biting rhythms and transparent textures, very individualised wind voices (voices of the wind…) .... The first movement is bar-to-bar made new, ultra-detailed yet thought-through, with a marvellously atmospheric opening; every wind solo tells its own tale.

I woke up at an unseemly hour (prior to an already-early departure shortly for a day's pre-season testing at Brands Hatch, Jayne ) - prompted by your thread, and with a very strong coffee, I used the time for a detailed head-to-head listen to the first movement in this Gothenburg/Rouvali performance and the recent Paris/Jarvi recording. I've listened to both twice.

I hadn't re-read your posts, but doing so now, I am in complete agreement with what you say above. From the opening, the Rouvali grips far more: his clarinet soloist produces a disembodied, vocal sound, coming out of nowhere, saying wordless things which instantly draw you in, whereas in the French performance, it just sounds like someone playing the clarinet, very beautifully but somehow meaninglessly in comparison. Then the tremolo strings come in, quite politely and prettily in the French performance - but Rouvali makes them into an electric charge, galvanising the whole thing. Far more taut throughout (sharpened, biting, as you say) - precision and tension are the words that struck me. I'm afraid the Jarvi sounds slack and lacking in tension in comparison.

Stunning moment in the Rouvali at 07:33 where the strings turn the mood from anxious to positive: beautifully paced, with a sudden glow and vibrato to the tone which are heart-stopping. Altogether more conventional (and 15 seconds later) in the Jarvi.

And then the conclusion: those pizzicato arpeggios (the first really stark and spare) much more characterful and distinct from one another (just conventional harp-like flourishes in the Jarvi, in comparison).

Can't wait to get to grips with the rest of the performance as a whole (especially given what you and DublinJimbo say about the finale)

[Maclintick]

Sibelius 4 - for me an incredibly bleak piece of music in two halves (two movements each), the 2nd half being an expansion & development of the first, with each half beginning in utter darkness, rising to a kind of catharsis, passing through to the ordinary world of everyday life and then disintegrating and fragmenting into complete alienation. Ending is not so much tragic as without resolution—basically the beginning of a chorale that can't be completed. A lot of its mood is defined by long passages in the 2nd and 4th movements that consist of "aimless drifting"—also a big feature in the 3rd, 5th and 6th symphonies—for example here or here—music with a lot of surface motion that's essentially stuck in a harmonic/structural holding pattern and goes nowhere—and by the end this directionless activity has become untenable, and then even the directionless chorale fragments become untenable, and the music is reduced to just reiterations of the A minor triad.

Yes - an eloquent summary of how Sibelius invokes nullity, powerlessness &, as you say, alienation in his 4th, Kea.

Not his darkest piece of music—that's for me the 6th which I think of as a musical portrait of total depression and isolation, like being in a locked-in state, or being the last human being on earth. Probably more "existentialist" I guess.

Gosh ! My admittedly purely subjective reaction to this piece couldn't be more different. In the 6th the composer seems to me to roam alone in the natural world, & as with that familiar figure of Germanic Romanticism, Der Wanderer, he's prey to fluctuating moods. To invoke the composer's own much-quoted visual metaphor, in the first movt it is as if he's contemplating an icy river flowing with "cold spring water", a stream oscillating between the nominal Dorian D minor and C major. Here Sibelius moves with sure and apparently artless compositional dexterity through evanescent music of troubled serenity, shot through with moments of fleeting exultation, flashes of light, as if the low northern sun is glimpsed bursting through the trees, here...




...& later in an ecstatically soaring passage towards the end of the movt, the music seems to summon up nothing other than Shelley's elusive "Spirit of Delight" (invoked by his great English contemporary Elgar, of course).
No, for me the real existential nightmare is Tapiola, but I've got into hot water with that opinion before, so I'll stop here...

[jayne lee wilson]

I woke up at an unseemly hour (prior to an already-early departure shortly for a day's pre-season testing at Brands Hatch, Jayne ) - prompted by your thread, and with a very strong coffee, I used the time for a detailed head-to-head listen to the first movement in this Gothenburg/Rouvali performance and the recent Paris/Jarvi recording. I've listened to both twice.

I hadn't re-read your posts, but doing so now, I am in complete agreement with what you say above. From the opening, the Rouvali grips far more: his clarinet soloist produces a disembodied, vocal sound, coming out of nowhere, saying wordless things which instantly draw you in, whereas in the French performance, it just sounds like someone playing the clarinet, very beautifully but somehow meaninglessly in comparison. Then the tremolo strings come in, quite politely and prettily in the French performance - but Rouvali makes them into an electric charge, galvanising the whole thing. Far more taut throughout (sharpened, biting, as you say) - precision and tension are the words that struck me. I'm afraid the Jarvi sounds slack and lacking in tension in comparison.

Stunning moment in the Rouvali at 07:33 where the strings turn the mood from anxious to positive: beautifully paced, with a sudden glow and vibrato to the tone which are heart-stopping. Altogether more conventional (and 15 seconds later) in the Jarvi.

And then the conclusion: those pizzicato arpeggios (the first really stark and spare) much more characterful and distinct from one another (just conventional harp-like flourishes in the Jarvi, in comparison).

Can't wait to get to grips with the rest of the performance as a whole (especially given what you and DublinJimbo say about the finale)

Thanks for the close listening , Cal... I had similar impressions with the P-Jarvi 4th, reported on the Listening thread...
Good luck, or God Speed, with your dashing protégé at Brands! I hope he's good in the rain....

[Nick Armstrong]

I hope he's good in the rain....

He was! Prefers it! ("Much more fun" )

[Bella Kemp]

This is a glorious thread. What insight you are all bringing to Sibelius and his interpreters! - and perhaps we might even imagine some of those tremolo strings providing the soundtrack to cars racing in the rain. But seriously, I have found so much here moving, profound and life-enhancing.

[Bryn]

I have to admit I have never read or had a copy of The Language of Music (a situation soon to be rectified, care of WeBuy Books. The one reference to the tome I am familiar with is that by John Tilbury in the introduction to his critique of John Cage's Music of Changes, reproduced in Cardew's Stockhausen Serves Imperialism.

My £3.30 (including 'free' p&p) clean 1981 reprint paperback copy has just been delivered. Now to find what all the fuss is about. I should add that I have never considered music to be a language.