It doesn't really tell a story per se, yet it always reminds one of some great Nordic ballad or other. It's an early piece that the composer felt compelled to modify and revise over the years (1892-1901), giving us the music we know today. Next on the agenda are three Sibelius tone poems, starting with En Saga, Op. While I would not give up first-choice recommendations for Colin Davis (Philips or RCA), Simon Rattle (EMI), or John Barbirolli (EMI) for this new release, it's certainly in the running. The music Sibelius called the "flight of the wild swans" makes a momentous and eloquent entrance, capping a rewarding performance of the work. After a curiously abrupt conclusion to the slow movement, the final Allegro molto seems a virtual eruption of sound, and Schmidt isn't afraid to emphasize the contrasts. Schmidt continues in this vein throughout the Andante, with its continuous pizzicato notes seeming more urgent than usual. The conductor leads the music with an extraordinarily sensitive touch, the poetry and grandeur of Sibelius's music always in the fore. Schmidt takes a gentle, leisurely opening tempo, building to a vigorous "sunrise" turning point and then moving along more briskly from there. ![]() With its grand gestures, the symphony sounds like typical Sibelius, especially in its wonderful theatrics. ![]() It comprises only three movements, the revised version melding the first two movements into one. 82, which Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) premiered in 1915 at the beginning of the First World War, revising in 1916 and again in 1919. He had probably conducted Sibelius about a thousand times in his lifetime, so it's good to be able to hear this recording from him. They produced the present, 2011 Sibelius release in 2007 with the late Danish conductor and composer Ole Schmidt (1928-2010). Royal Philharmonic Masterworks RPM 28910.Įver since the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra began producing their own discs in their Royal Philharmonic Masterworks Audiophile Collection, they've given us some fine recordings led by some fine guest conductors. Ole Schmidt, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. God opens His door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.Also, En Saga, The Swan of Tuonela, and Valse Triste. But I already begin to see dimly the mountain that I shall certainly ascend. Sibelius had jotted these words in his notebook: “In a deep valley again. He had scarcely settled into his life again when, to his horror and disbelief, virtually all Europe was at war. Jean Sibelius must have still been feeling the glow of his recent successful visit to America when on his return home, he heard the news of the assassination at Sarajevo of the heir to the Austrian throne. ![]() The finale is reminiscent of a tarantella, the south Italian dance inspired by a tarantula bite. The first movement’s theme derives from a 1950s TV show tune, while the second tries to weave a longer, enduring melody from wisp-like fragments. John Adams’s Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? is a piano concerto inspired by a line in an old New Yorker article about the radical Catholic social justice activist Dorothy Day (echoing a quote attributed to various sources). Ammons: “He held radical light / as music in his skull: music / turned, as / over ridges immanences of evening light rise.” He wrote Radical Light for Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, intending it as companion to symphonies by Jean Sibelius. Steven Stucky was one of the preeminent American composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |