Introduction

When I joined the CBSO over 20 years ago, Sakari Oramo was our music director. I was very young and inexperienced and had the great privilege of playing many pieces of orchestral repertoire for the first time under his expert guidance. Sibelius’s 5th Symphony, the final piece in our concert this afternoon, was one such piece.

Sakari’s love and passion for the music of his fellow Finn goes very deep and I feel immensely fortunate to have learnt this music from him. Since those days I have performed the 5th Symphony, and many other of Sibelius’s orchestral works, numerous times but I never get tired of it.

To my ears (which may be a little biased….) the 5th Symphony is bookended by particularly fantastic writing for the horn section – the piece opens with us heralding what sounds to me like a glorious sunrise. I enjoy the challenge of playing the huge number of beautiful and heroic solos that have been written for the horn by many composers over the years, but I also love it when composers write for us as a section which is exactly what Sibelius did in this Symphony.

In the finale, we play what I think must be one of Sibelius’s most famous musical ideas: a repeated bell-like, majestic motif that is passed between the two pairs of horns. The story goes that this music came to him after watching a flock of swans pass overhead - perhaps you’ll be able to picture this image as you hear us play this afternoon.

Elspeth Dutch
Section Leader Horn

Programme notes

In the mid-twentieth century Sibelius was massive: a big influence on composers and audiences loved him. Still’s Threnody is a stunning tribute after Sibelius’ death. Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.2 crackles with energy - an athletic workout for the brilliant Yeol Eum Son. Sibelius’s exuberant Symphony No.5 was inspired by the sight of flying swans: ‘One of my greatest experiences!’ he wrote. ‘Lord God, what beauty!’

Threnody (In Memory of Jean Sibelius)

William Grant Still (1895-1978)

Still was commissioned by conductor Fabien Sevitzky to write a piece marking the centenary of Sibelius’ birth, which fell in 1965. It was in fact only eight years since Sibelius died, the Finnish composer having lived to the age of almost 92. It was a relatively late work for the 70-year old Still, who had in recent years struggled to get commissions. He had been prolific and hugely popular throughout the 1930s and 1940s, writing symphonies and operas as well as film and radio scores, despite the horrific racial discrimination he and other black composers faced. While only occasionally overtly political in his works – the powerful cantata And They Lynched him on a Tree (1940) is an exception – he consciously drew on idioms associated with African-American music, including the blues. His acclaimed Afro-American Symphony was written in 1930. He was more political in his writings and public talks, and was particularly keen to break down those boundaries and prejudices which attempted to keep black composers out of the concert hall. His aim was to fulfil what he termed a ‘purpose larger than mere music’. As he continued: ‘If it will help in some way to bring about better interracial understanding in America and in other countries, then I will feel that the work is justified.’

By 1965 orchestral commissions were thin on the ground, so Still was glad to accept this commission – not least because of his attachment to Sibelius’s music. In common with many American composers of his age, Still would have been profoundly influenced by the vogue for Sibelius in the 1920s, and shared in common with him a strong sense of nationhood. After Still’s death, music critic Earl Calloway linked Still’s name with that of Sibelius (as well as Glinka, Dvořák, and others) in terms of their ‘nationalist’ music. Sibelius himself, in a rare moment of enthusiasm for another composer, had spoken warmly of Still’s Afro-American Symphony.

A ‘Threnody’ is a song of lamentation for the dead and – naturally – is of a sombre, sometimes heartbreaking quality. Still begins his in an uncharacteristic mood for a lament – with a burst of brass. Yet as some have pointed out, this is quite possibly a nod to the brass opening of Sibelius’ famous tone poem Finlandia. What follows is a gently melancholy orchestral ‘song’, lightly tinged with blues, and very much recalling the musical idiom of the Afro-American Symphony. The central section, with its rhythmic theme and pulsing drums, is a sorrowful funeral march, given warmth by richly scored strings. The piece closes sombrely, the brass now muted.

Piano Concerto No.2

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Prokofiev was known for being a rebellious, confident, not always agreeable character. His early piano pieces were experimental and as prickly as the man himself; the dissonances in his Piano Concerto no. 2 caused a scandal at the 1913 premiere (one critic noted a couple fleeing for the exit exclaiming ‘Music like that can drive you crazy!’, while others hissed, and someone reportedly cried that their cat could write better music). Yet Prokofiev was capable of great personal tenderness: both the Concerto and his Sonata no. 2 were dedicated to the memory of his friend Maximilian Schmidthof, who had committed suicide in 1913.

Given the technical demands of the Concerto, we can fully appreciate what a gifted pianist Prokofiev was, as he gave the first performance in 1913. The first movement opens unobtrusively with a few orchestral bars, before the soloist arrives with a rhapsodic Rachmaninoff-ish theme, the orchestra periodically shimmering into view. This mood is periodically intercut with fiendishly virtuosic passages and what Herbert Glass has called a ‘knuckle-busting cadenza’ at the end of an elaborate solo passage lasting some 4 minutes. The orchestra surges back to life briefly before dissolving, with the soloist, into an exhausted hush at the close of this extraordinary movement.

In the second movement the pianist plays rapid semiquavers literally throughout, without a single pause for breath. Other than playfully – or wickedly – throwing in a sudden bar in 3-time, this is a ‘moto perpetuo’ with a relentless beat. The orchestra scrambles to keep up, occasionally offering bursts of commentary as if astonished at the pianist’s activity. Marked ‘Intermezzo,’ the third movement begins – and largely continues – as a grotesque march. The central section has an uneasy playfulness, with piano glissandi (‘gliding’ down the keyboard) accompanying a woozy theme in the winds and strings. The march returns, with some aggressive snarls, before a muted close. Finally, after a hectic beginning to the fourth movement, the Concerto finds its way back to the softer, more introverted style of the first movement. Introduced by a processional orchestral passage, the piano, for almost the only time, slows down to a relatively simple theme drawn from the ‘processional’ music. While the piano revs up again, the theme takes on an almost rhapsodic quality. Another lengthy cadenza, follows which – apart from an eerie episode for piano, clarinet and cello - takes everything up a gear, and the Concerto plays out the remaining minutes in cascades of fireworks. While some maybe hissed at the premiere, others declared it a work of genius: listeners today would surely be inclined to the latter view.

Symphony no.5

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony – the fifth of seven in total – was premiered, conducted by Sibelius himself, on the evening of his 50th birthday on 8 December 1915. It is, unusually, entirely in a major key and has an optimistic, even joyful character especially in the final movement. This was possibly a response to the considerably bleaker Symphony no. 4 which preceded it. But it also has a restless, occasionally jittery quality, perhaps reflecting the erratic nature of its composer. Sibelius was a mass of contradictions: a hard-worker, yet frequently given to extravagant drinking and dining; a family man (fathering six daughters with his wife Aino), yet the marriage was stormy due to Sibelius’s frequent absences, hard-living, and over-spending. Not long after completing Symphony No 5 he was on the brink of having his grand piano confiscated by bailiffs (he was fortunately bailed out by a wealthy fan).

He revised the work several times after the premiere, most drastically by compressing the original first and second movements into one, though this larger movement retains the contrasting sections. The opening melody is grand and spacious, rising nobly from the horn section before triggering a series of themes across the woodwinds. An extrovert, swinging tune in the brass about two-thirds through gives a foretaste of the finale. The finale’s main theme seems on the brink of bursting out through the gentle, lyrical texture of the Andante, though the movement has a wistful, almost Viennese waltz-like character of its own. The finale starts in a scurrying mood and with a great sense of anticipation. When it finally appears, the famous theme, inspired by the sight of swans, feels like a sunrise: as Sibelius wrote in his diary, ‘Today at ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon.’ The swans generously allow a beautiful counter-theme to share their musical space at the first appearance. After a further development of the ‘scurrying’ of the opening, the swans reappear, muted at first as if from far away, then growing in power, once more alongside its counter-melody. The conclusion of the Symphony is extraordinary. The surging, romantic drama abruptly ceases, interrupted by six epic, fortissimo chords – surrounded by silence.

© Lucy Walker