(It was while he was a student, too, that he changed his first name from Johan to its French equivalent, Jean.) When the composer Ferruccio Busoni joined the institute as a piano teacher the two became friends. Very soon he abandoned law to study music full-time, and received his first formal composition lessons. He composed copiously through his teens, yet despite his obvious musical talent he began studying law, though at the same time he enrolled at the Helsinki Music Institute (now the Sibelius Academy). The family’s first language was Swedish, but from the age of nine he attended Finnish-speaking schools and was soon fascinated by Finnish mythology, particularly the folk stories collected in the Kalevala, first published in 1835.īy then he was having piano and violin lessons. His father died when he was three, and he was brought up by his mother and grandmother. Performance, Stereo Sonics and Multichannel Sonics: 4.5 out of 5 Stars.Sibelius was born in Hämeenlinna, in the south of what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous part of the Russian empire. A credit must go to the audience too for until the final peroration has concluded and they burst into spontaneous applause, the listener will have no idea that this is a concert performance. The engineers deserve our thanks for they have captured a most beautiful sound, clear but rounded (not a dry sound to be heard) and the ambience of the Concertgebouw is very well reproduced. The partnership between Jansons and the RCOA is clearly developing into something very special indeed. The RCO are, as always, superb – their tone is beautiful without being rich for the sake of being rich and whilst this is a live recording, the ensemble is wonderful and they exhibit sensitive musicianship throughout. Pacing throughout is nigh-on perfect, as are the allusions he draws from the score at once rich and sparse. Right from the opening pulsating string figures, one realises that this will be a very fine reading of Sibelius’ enigmatic symphony. Sibelius wanted nothing to do with such political interpretations and said as much later in a letter to Georg Schneevoigt, another conductor, after Schneevoigt had explained the symphony in similar terms in a programme note for its performance in Boston. For Sibelius the symphonic form was the means par excellence for an escape from programme music, for this was what was continually being demanded of him and which he composed because he needed the commission fees. Sibelius was nonetheless particularly irritated by comments made by Robert Kajanus, Finland’s most well-known conductor, who interpreted the Second Symphony as a musical depiction of the resistance and the triumph of the Finnish people in an article for the Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper a week after the work’s premiere this opinion was consequently adopted by many. We know that these political developments were a cause of great concern to Sibelius Erik Tawaststjerna’s monumental monograph leaves us in no doubt over this. The great composer had, after all, himself created a hymn to his homeland with Finlandia in 1899 and another new composition by him would provide another powerful political statement.

The Finnish people have never felt more united than they did one century ago. Russia’s rule over Finland was becoming more and more oppressive and preparations were being made to amalgamate the Finnish army with the Russian war machine. The group of artists to which Jean Sibelius belonged made no secret of their patriotic convictions the time for politically unengaged art was over.

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