Nordic Nights

Sibelius, Karelia Suite

Jean Sibelius’ Karelia Suite (1906) is fourteen minutes of music from Sibelius’  longer work Karelian Music. The forty-four minute work was written in the beginning of Sibelius’ career, and the Suite created shortly after remains one of his most beloved works. Sibelius was inspired to write Karelian Music due to the beautiful nature he and his wife, Aino, experienced while spending their honeymoon in Karelia. 

Karelia Suite harbors a nationalistic quality; the original work was written with the goal of preserving and celebrating Finnish folk themes in their national, rustic styles. Sibelius was a composer who revered nature’s beauty and, amidst political turmoil, hoped to create art that preserved Finland’s culture. At the time, Finland was in danger of being annexed by the Russian Empire. After emerging as a young composer, Jean Sibelius had been sought out by those looking to save Finnish culture and art from the occupation, and was tasked with composing orchestral works that utilized traditional melodies and themes. 

Although Karelia was a success by all measures—a work written for the people, loved by the people—Jean Sibelius’ musical output would eventually come to a complete halt. In 1945, Sibelius set fire to the full score to Karelian Music as well as many of his later works. In her memoir, Aino recalls witnessing heaps of scores being tossed into a laundry basket and thrown into their hearth by her husband. She was always a supportive partner to the composer, and wrote that upon seeing the flames she had to leave the room, completely unaware of the extent of the destruction. Sibelius was daunted by the success of his Seventh Symphony (1914), and openly believed that if he could not compose something better, his writing must cease. Of the multiple works destroyed, the original Karelian Music was lost. Perhaps most ill-fated were the sketches of Symphony No. 8, which was never reconstructed.

Adès, Air – Homage to Sibelius

Thomas Adés is a British composer, conductor, and pianist born in 1971. Adés’ body of work is contemporary and engaging while remaining melodic and graceful. In an orchestral setting, his use of soloistic wind and brass is often jazzy and pointillistic, with strings buzzing just under the surface. Adés is a master of orchestral texture, often manipulating sound by building layers slowly and leading to a satisfying culmination. 

Air was commissioned by Roche and the Lucerne Festival for violin virtuoso Anne-Sophie Mütter. It premiered in 2022 in Switzerland with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra under Adés’ baton. The Air is silvery, breathy while also bearing contemplative substance. The orchestration is captivating, employing Adés signature orchestral layering techniques that seem to manipulate time as well as distance. The solo violin pauses for a few brief moments, but ultimately is the melodic constant that connects all sections of the orchestra. Plaintive and somber, the violin solo meditates on a simple theme and explores a full range of emotion.

Thomas Adés cites composer Jean Sibelius as having a fascinating ability to manipulate harmony. Sibelius’ opera Tempest significantly influenced Adés’ take on the subject in 2010, with Adés imbibing his own magical storm with orchestrational alchemy gleaned from the elder composer. Sibelius’ influence continued throughout Adés’ compositional life, and the Air was born out of this appreciation. Air evokes Sibelius through its celebration of harmonies and their expansion, a further study in Adés’ admiration for the Finn.

Sibelius, Symphony No. 2

In 1901, Jean Sibelius was urged to travel to Italy for personal development and musical inspiration. This same prescription had famously been taken by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss, leading to some of their most lucrative and stylistic works. Sibelius obliged Alex Carpelan, a penniless but well-connected baron, and left for Italy. He began composing his Second Symphony in 1901—after his Finlandia had garnered him positive reception—and would later call the completed work, “a confession of the soul.” 

Symphony No. 2 is Sibelius’ longest symphony, though it took under two years to compose. While in Italy, Sibelius wrote that a vision of Don Juan came to him menacingly. Sibelius likened this vision to Death itself, ghostly but singing, and this mystical vision revealed the bassoon melody in the second movement. In fact, the bassoon melody is written on the reverse side of the journal entry regarding Sibelius’ vision. 

Here, the bassoons present a theme in perfect octaves accompanied by a pizzicato bass line. This moment in the music strikes an inconsolable stillness in the listener, as well as an anxious feeling overall. Sibelius stated that during his “visit,” Don Juan was unable to be quelled, and signaled impending fate. Later in the second movement, Sibelius notates “Christus” in his sketches of a major theme, perhaps indicating that Don Juan had been quelled, and that the now-major tonality signaled triumph for the Finnish people. Finnish conductor Robert Kajunus remarked that the second movement of this symphony truly did communicate the consternation and fear amongst Finns of the time. He stated that this movement “strikes one as the most broken-hearted protest against all the injustice that threatens at the present time to deprive the sun of its light and our flowers of their scent.”

Premiered at the time of Russian sanctions, the boisterous ending to the Second Symphony elicited a positive response from the general public. Finns nicknamed the work “Symphony of Independence” as the ending bore a triumphant tone which gave them hope for their future as an independent nation. Sibelius grew disdainful of the Russian occupation and was pleased to preserve Finnish culture and create works that, he believed, paid appropriate homage to his native land. Preserving his dear homeland was always Sibelius’ true musical priority.