Sibelius (1865-1957) - Violin Concerto
In candle-lit
gloom a small child huddles, cuddling a hot bed-time drink, toasting his
face before a blazing log fire. All around he hears the winter wind’s icy
whining, as it seeks crevices through which it can slip, purely to chill
his back. Although through the frosted window he could watch the incessant
shivering of snow swirling under the eaves, his gaze prefers the flickering
flames, which offer fleeting glimpses of his mother’s eye-widening tales.
I remember
nights like that, but it’s a childhood memory increasingly rare in these
electrified, centrally-heated, draught-proofed, double-glazed days. About
130 years ago it would have been all too common, especially for a Finnish
infant like Janne Sibelius. However, he found a decidedly uncommon
use for that memory (or something like it). Of course, the Finnish seasons
are far more sharply contrasted than the UK’s, and I wouldn’t be at all
surprised if Sibelius, like Stravinsky, recalled “the Finnish spring, which
began in an instant, and was like the whole Earth cracking.”
Perhaps
this may seem like sheer conjecture, until you consider the profound extent
of Nature’s influence, to which Sibelius made countless references: “Nature
is coming to life: that life which I so love, . . . whose essence shall
pervade everything I compose” (Sibelius and Mahler were closer than their
famous exchange tends to imply!).
Nature
pervaded his music even before he emerged from the heady 1890s, when the
vivid nationalism of his Kalevala-inspired compositions - direct
responses to the increasingly immediate threat from the Imperialist Russia
- had made him a national hero. In the early 1900s, as his style began
to crystallise, the early influences of Tchaikovsky and Grieg receded,
ousted by the organism of Nature. It suffused his instrumentation
- the “fire and ice” sound, glowing darkly from deep within. It suffused
his musical processes - the “plant growth” development of materials, the
“running water” ostinati, the “craggy outcroppings”. It suffused the contours
of his themes - the sinuous sensuality and stark austerity.
The classicism
of his later works was not recession, but reinforcement through deeper
understanding of the organisation of Nature - which makes his reluctance
to go beyond the Seventh Symphony seem almost obvious. The Second
Symphony and the subsequent Violin Concerto can be viewed as
the melting-pots in which he forged his “first maturity”, a transition
from “overt nationalist” to “organic naturalist”, felt as much through
formal flux as profound luminsescence.
More prosaically,
the Violin Concerto - now amongst the most popular and oft-recorded
- had a shaky start. The première (1903) was disastrous, largely
because Sibelius, apparently in desperate need of some ready cash, brought
it forward a month. The substitute soloist just wasn’t up to it. Sibelius
hastily withdrew the score. The now-familiar revision, premiered in Berlin
by Karl Halir and Richard Strauss, at first fared little better, remaining
unknown until the 1930s when Heifetz dusted it off and showed the world
what it had been missing. The rest, as they say, is history.
1.
Allegro moderato: Sibelius craftily shifts the parameters of sonata
form. Transferring the bulk of his developmental processes into the thematic
expositions, he renders the development section a vestigial but forceful
bridge, a bit like the one in Bruch’s G Minor Concerto. However,
he bolsters the bridge by repositioning the (main) cadenza to double as
a soloistic development complementing the orchestral. The first subject
reprise is truncated, bypassing a now-redundant subsidiary cadenza. Finally
the bridge music, orchestra joined by soloist, becomes an even more forceful
coda.
Remarkable,
yet the atmosphere Sibelius engenders is more so. “Listen, and I
will tell you more”: the soloist seems to be a Finnish Scheherazade,
spinning a first subject of elaborate, fertile, exotic tracery out of the
oscillating vacuum of orchestral strings. As the violin becomes more excitable,
the dark-hued orchestra creeps in underneath. Eventually, the orchestra
alone intones the brooding, songlike second subject, on which the soloist
subsequently weaves two opposed elaborations - one impassioned and earthy,
the other remote, as ethereal as the aurora. Against the penetrating glister
of the violin, the orchestra - even in full flood - remains shrouded, like
black waters running deep beneath bright ice.
2.
Adagio di molto: Contrasting the first movement’s complexity, this
is a simple binary form with brief coda, the melody given first to the
soloist, and second to the orchestra. If the first movement’s final chord
slammed a door to deny the dawn, the second’s opening woodwind phrases
respond in cold supplication. The halting phrases soon become the bones
of the violin’s burning yearnings, whose eventual exhaustion strikes fire
in the “supplication”, a flame of agitation which spreads to the violin.
3.
Allegro ma non tanto: The form is tantalising: is it a rondo? Is it
an extended binary form like the First Symphony’s finale? Well,
what we have is this: theme A, theme B, a bridging crescendo. Then the
whole pattern is reworked, disgorging into a truly amazing coda. From the
outset mutually reflecting bass strings and tympani establish a “riding”
pulse that, in some form, persists right through. Apparently, answering
that second movement prayer, the World again begins to turn. Animal vitality
emerges through the first subject, which remains the sole province of the
agile violin until its climactic orchestral reprise. Arboreal strength
emerges through the second, which on its reprise is threaded by the violin’s
slender glacial overtones. These fire off the cataclysmic coda, surging
and heaving from deep within the orchestra to ecstatic incantations from
the soloist. The long winter night is over - the whole Earth cracks!
.
© Paul Serotsky
29, Carr Street,
Kamo,
Whangarei 0101,
Northland,
New Zealand
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