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My "Essential Sibelius" arrived this morning, March 1st. Seems fitting!

Diapason wrote:My "Essential Sibelius" arrived this morning, March 1st. Seems fitting!

Great timing maestro, I wouldn't expect anything less from a very fine musician like yourself. That is a lovely set.

This thread already has four pages by the time of its official beginning :). It feels strange to write it but I would like to welcome you to the listening project for the month of March. This month I would like us to focus on Sibelius Symphony no. 5 but I am sure that we will also go beyond this work of this great finnish composer.

Sibelius wrote the first version of this symphony in 1915. There also exist the 1917 version and the final and definitive version of 1919 (which is the common version). For now, I would like us to focus and that common version and perhaps talk about the earlier versions later.

I have checked out two books at the library where I work for this thread. One of them is the 'Cambridge Music Handbook Sibelius Symphony no. 5' written by James Hepokoski. 107 pages in which this particular work is analyzed. I had to check it out. I am only starting through it but will share its secret as we go along.




Introduction:

According to this author, Sibelius was part of a group of modernism composer including Elgar, Puccini, Mahler, Wolf, Debussy, Strauss, Glazunov, Nielsen, Busoni and several others born after 1860. They each tried to bring music to a new age. This age lasted from 1890 to 1914 according to this musicologist.

But why am I telling you this? Sibelius' fifth was commissioned by the finnish goverment in honor of Sibelius' 50th birthday. Many people considered the last attempt by Sibelius into modernism to be his 4th symphony. After that, it took him a few years before writing another symphony. He gave a lot of thought to that one mostly as to where he would like his music to go to next. He apparently purposely chose his fifth to be more heroic, appealing and accessible to contrast from his fourth.

Matt.

Instrumentation:

2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings.

I will come back to this later but the woodwinds musician must perform a lot in this piece.


This piece and me:

Here is how I would first like us to start this thread. I would like those who wish to to express their feelings about this piece. How much they like it, which part they like best and so on. Later on we could get into more specifics like which versions you like best and all that.

My first encounter with Sibelius was a Naxos disc featuring many of his tone poems



I was immediately hooked and decided to buy as many different pieces by that composer. It did not take a long time before I purchased my first symphonies by him. To the day, I still have to find one piece by that composer that I do not like. Somehow, his music appeals to me immediately. Usually, when the effect of a piece of music is immediate, my interest tend to fade away quickly afterwords but Sibelius' music is one of the exception.

That leads me to Sibelius' fifth. Why do I like it so much?

- It has three beautiful movements
- From the first movement I particularly like the beginning with the nice effect played by the horns and tuba.
- From the second movement I like how the violin plays and how the flutes come in to play along the violin. For the longest time I nickname that movement the flute movement because the flute are playing from beginning to end almost.
- The third movement is amazingly heroic and beautiful and is one of those 'feel good' or 'make you see the beauty of the world' moment. Apparently, Sibelius had the idea for one of the main theme for that movement when he saw 16 swans taking off a lake close to his home and it was also inspired by swan-calls. I actually found this quote on the internet:

"On the 21st April Sibelius saw sixteen swans. In his diary he immediately wrote a magnificent thematic sequence, which ended up in the finale of the fifth symphony. "One of the great experiences of my life! God, how beautiful," he wrote in his diary. "

and this article from NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/18/111667517 ... -for-swans

The birdwatcher in me can only like this movement even more.

- I still have to find one symphony in the whole repertoire where the woodwinds play such an important role. It is almost like sometimes the violin are there to accompany the woodwinds and the brass and not the other typical way around.

And there are several other reasons why I like it but I should stop here now.

Matt.

Good start Matt!

It is interesting that you started from where you did because if I was asked why I liked the music of Sibelius I would say both the mood of the music and the orchestral textures contained in it. It is not all lush strings and the music contains lovely textures due to the high content of the woodwind and brass.

After doing some research I came to the conclusion that the swans that Sibelius heard are probably Whooper Swans. It happens to be Finland's national bird.

Here is a website with more information on that bird. You can even hear an audio of a flock of those swans. I would invite you to listen to it. It is amazing how close Sibelius' theme is close to it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Whooper_Swan

The ressemblance is even more striking in my opinion in the first audio clip (of the three) on the following website:

http://ibc.lynxeds.com/species/whooper- ... nds#sounds

Matt.

^^ a very good start Matt :-)

I have the Inkinen recording lined up to play soon and will contribute in some detail when I through with it....

The first recording I heard was HvK on DG, and it was one of the finest revelations I have had as a CM fan...

...I'll leave it there for now

PS: Matt, which recordings do you have in your collection?

ravel30 wrote:Here is a website with more information on that bird. You can even hear an audio of a flock of those swans. I would invite you to listen to it. It is amazing how close Sibelius' theme is close to it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Whooper_Swan

The ressemblance is even more striking in my opinion in the first audio clip (of the three) on the following website:

http://ibc.lynxeds.com/species/whooper- ... nds#sounds

Matt.

Very interesting that Matt as we do not get to listen to swans in Ireland because as far as I know the only type that we have here are mute swans.

I did not buy any versions of Sibelius 5 as I own enough at this stage. The different versions of the Sibelius Symphony No. 5 that I own (in alphabetical order) are;

Ashkenazy: Philharmonia Orch. [Decca]
Berglund: Helsinki Philharmonic Orch. [EMI]
Bernstein: New York Phil. Orch. [Sony]
Blomstedt: San Francisco Symphony Orch. [Decca]
Davis: Boston Symphony Orch. [Philips]
Davis: London Symphony Orch. [RCA]
Jansons: Oslo Philharmonic Orch. [EMI]
von Karajan: Berlin Philharmonic Orch. [DG]
von Karajan: Berlin Philharmonic Orch. [EMI]
Sakari: Iceland Symphony Orch. [Naxos]
Sanderling: Berlin Symphony Orch. [Berlin]
Vanska: Lahti Symphony Orch. [BIS]

bombasticDarren wrote:^^ a very good start Matt :-)

I have the Inkinen recording lined up to play soon and will contribute in some detail when I through with it....

The first recording I heard was HvK on DG, and it was one of the finest revelations I have had as a CM fan...

...I'll leave it there for now

PS: Matt, which recordings do you have in your collection?

I have the following versions:

Vanska / Lahti Symphony Orchestra / BIS
Sakari / Iceland Symphony Orchestra / Naxos
Berglund / Helsinki Symphony Orchestra / EMI Classics
Maazel / Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra / Sony Classical


Here comes the embarrassing part. Every students, teachers and alumni of the university where I work have access to complete Naxos Collection (including the company that Naxos own the catalogue of). Because of that, I will also be able to listen to the following versions:

Adrian Leaper/ Slovak Symphony Orchestra/ Naxos
Inkinen/New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/ Naxos
Koussevitzky (1935-1936) / Boston Symphony Orchestra / Naxos Historical
Ormandy (1954) / Philadelphia Orchestra / Naxos Classical Archive
Volmer/Adelaide Symphony, ABC Classics
Vanska/Minnesota Orchestra, BIS SACD
Gibson/Scottish National Orchestra/Chandos
Saraste/ London Philarmonic / LPO
Segerstam / Helsinki Philarmonic Orchestra / Ondine
Sanderling / Berlin Symphony / Berlin Classics
Rodzinki / Cleveland Orchestra / Radiex
Kajanus (1932)/ Finish National Orchestra / Divine Art
Horenstein / BBC Northern Orchestra / BBC Legends
Jansons / Oslo Symphony Orchestra / EMI Classics
Rattle / City of Birmingham Orchestra / EMI Classics
von Karajan / Philarmonia Orchestra / EMI Classics

Some versions look very interesting. For example, the Kajanus recording of 1932 should be interesting. There are versions in there that I have always been curious about like the Segerstam, Gibson, Rattle, HvK, Jansons and especially the Vanska/Minnesota Symphony orchestra. So it should be very interesting to discover these versions.