Sibelius & Schumann:
Paying it Forward

CONCERTO FOR TWO VIOLINS IN D MINOR, BWV 1043 | Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

First performance: 1730, Leipzig, Collegium Musicum | Orchestra Lumos Premiere and most recent performance: October 2021

Program notes

VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MINOR, OP. 47 | Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

World Premiere: 1904, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Viktor Nováček, violin | Orchestra Lumos Premiere and most recent performance: November 2014

The compositions of Jean Sibelius constitute a case study in the capriciousness of musical taste and the power of the artistic avant-garde.  Pigeonholed by many as primarily a Finnish nationalist, whose dark, remote music was a shallow representative of Romanticism’s last gasps, Sibelius was nevertheless deemed the champion of American and British conservative musical tastes between the world wars.   Typical was Olin Downes, music critic of the Times, whose relentless public support of Sibelius bordered on sycophancy. Likewise, Koussevitsky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, programmed a cycle of Sibelius’s symphonies, and dogged the composer to finish the eighth—which he never did.   But, those who favored the avant-garde of Stravinsky, Schönberg, and company—and that included most of continental Europe and American intellectuals—were scathing in their contempt.  One respected and well-known critic entitled an essay about Sibelius,  “The Worst Composer in the World.”   These controversies, and Sibelius’s life-long struggle with alcoholism and depression no doubt played a signal part in his composing nothing of significance from the nineteen thirties until his death in 1957 at the age of 91.

But tastes change, and the current crop of composers and scholars now take a more balanced view of Sibelius’s compositions.   His seven symphonies enjoy renewed respect, although the ever-popular Symphony No.2 has long been a repertory standard, and–other than the evergreen Finlandia—is his most popular work.   It is not incorrect, of course, to recognize the deeply informing rôle of nationalist Finnish elements in his music style.  He consciously and assiduously studied and absorbed the musical and literary heritage of the Finnish culture and adroitly folded them into a unique personal statement.  He was completely taken by the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, and early on his musical style reflected these cultural elements, from his melodic choices to the stories behind his tone poems.   His symphonies are large soundscapes that surge and ebb, whose melodies often appear first as small kernels of a few notes whose significance is easily overlooked.  But, as the music unfolds and these bits of melody appear in a kaleidoscope of identities, they meld together into great torrents of themes.  Sibelius was a master of orchestration, and most listeners easily accept the inevitable comparisons to the bleak, cold, primæval landscapes of Finland.

Sibelius’ violin concerto has certainly stood the test of time, and is one of his most-performed works, as well as being one of the most important violin concertos in the repertoire.  It was composed in the period of his first two symphonies, and was first performed in 1904 in Helsinki (the performance was essentially a disaster—the violinist was not up to the task.)  In some ways, the piece would seem to be a contradiction.  On the one hand it is infused with his signature dark, cold Nordic textures that seem to float impersonally over human trivialities.  Yet, on the other, concertos by their very natures are often showpieces for a very real, single human being who plays musical material conceived to express that individuality.  Well! Pulling these disparate elements together would certainly seem a challenge, but Sibelius, on the whole succeeds quite well.  After the ill-fated first performance he spent some time revising, and the concerto was performed to great acclaim in Berlin in 1905, with Richard Strauss conducting.

Several points are recommended to the listener.  First, and it is rather evident, this concerto is really difficult!  Sibelius began as a violinist, and with a player’s grasp of the violin’s capabilities, he laid down formidable technical challenges to the performer.  Replete with double stops of all varieties (listen especially for the octave double stops at the end of the first movement), quick jumps from first to seventh position, and broken chords at very fast tempos, it is virtually a compendium of every difficult thing a composer might ask of a virtuoso violinist.  Especially impressive in the first movement is the passage wherein two of the soloist’s fingers execute a trill while the remaining two digits finger a melody on another string. The last movement has its impressive challenges, as well. An innovation is the long and important solo cadenza in the middle of the first movement that essentially functions as the development section. Relief from dark moods and textures, and brilliant technical challenges is found in the lyrical middle movement.  Throughout the concerto be aware of the impressive imagination exhibited by Sibelius in his creation of almost unique tonal colors through an imaginative scoring for the orchestra.

Sibelius carved out for himself a solitary position in the musical world between late Romanticism and the severe aesthetics of a new century.   It placed him in a difficult position with the purists of most camps, but his life’s work now is gradually gaining in stature as a serious reconsideration of his oeuvre continues.

 –Wm. E. Runyan

 © 2015 William E. Runyan

SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN E-flat MAJOR, OP. 97 (“RHENISH”) | Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

First Performance: 1851, Düsseldorf Symphony | Orchestra Orchestra Lumos Premiere: April 1989 | Most recent Orchestra Lumos performance: March 2018

Schumann composed in almost all of the common genres, and notwithstanding his success in the larger forms, did perhaps his most respected work in song and piano literature.  Known—at least during his lifetime—almost as much for his distinguished career as music critic and essayist, even today his analyses and commentaries lend valuable insights into the music of his milieu and times.  He was a formidable pianist—his wife, Clara, even more so—and his contributions to the piano stand with those of Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms in artistic significance.

Schumann was a Romantic to the core, yet, withal, he had great respect for clarity, balance, and formal integrity so characteristic of the music of Classicism.  It must be admitted, however, that to some degree his deep passions and emotional self-indulgences can be seen as aspects of a personality that ultimately broke down in the psychoses and pathologies that led to his early death in an institution. He was happy early on, however, and the years of his early marriage brought forth masterworks in spates, as his mind focused extraordinarily in narrow directions.   Up to the time of his marriage to Clara he had composed exclusively music for the piano, a great corpus of work that is one of the century’s important contributions to the literature for the instrument.  But the joy and exuberance upon his marriage in1840 led to a remarkable outpouring of songs—some 125 in that year alone.

Nevertheless, Schumann made important contributions to chamber and symphonic music, and his four symphonies are respected contributions to orchestral literature.  He turned his talents to the genre—at Clara’s enthusiastic encouragement–the very next year after the remarkable production of Lieder in 1840.  His first two symphonies—No. 1 in Bb Major “Spring” and No. 4 in D Minor (it’s complicated—don’t ask) were the result, and the first is an especially exuberant celebration of the joy and optimism of that period—not at all prescient of the dark and tragic end to his life.  The third work did not appear until about five years later—all three composed while he and Clara were living in Leipzig.  In 1850 they removed to Düsseldorf, a short distance down the Rhine from Cologne, where he took over leadership of important musical posts, to considerable acclaim and popularity.  He had been there less than a month, when he visited the magnificent, imposing cathedral of Cologne—the putative inspiration for Symphony No. 3 in Eb Major, composed in November and early December, later that fall.  More specifically, a subsequent visit in early November, the time of the elevation of the Archbishop of Cologne to cardinal, inspired the ecclesiastical solemnity of the fourth movement of the symphony.  That movement is an added movement before the last movement, giving five movements in all—not that unusual, given Beethoven’s example in his sixth symphony, as well as Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique.

The first movement is an energetic, effusive celebration of the Rhine River and the cathedral with a leaping, syncopated main theme that propels the whole movement.  The horns, especially, inform the atmosphere with a heroic quality so associated with the works of Richard Strauss some forty years later.  The gentle, undulating main section of the second movement is clearly an evocation of the flowing river.  This is the traditional “dance” or scherzo movement of most symphonies, but here, takes the character of a gentle German Ländler.  Schumann, being Schumann, can’t resist later taking the mood to a more forceful atmosphere, replete with the “heroic” horns, but it all ends peacefully.  The third movement provides a serene interlude that reminds us of the nuance and subtle beauty of so many of Schumann’s Lieder.  Harmonic richness and melodic invention beguile us, as the parade of winsome melodies pass before us.   In a creative touch of unification, Schumann makes constant use of a little four-note chromatic ascending scale that connects the melodic passages and ties it all together–that idea getting the last word.

The interpolated fourth movement is perhaps the signature movement of the symphony, inspired by the Archbishop’s elevation.  Schumann marked it as “in the character of a procession for a solemn ceremony.”  That it is, and it begins with a chorale-like passage in the trombones and horns that majestically ascends into the sonic stratosphere—trombones, of course, evoking their long association with the church.   The floating “solemn” harmonies are borne by the lower instruments that provide the “processional steps.” The soaring main theme pervades throughout, with sections treated contrapuntally in the best ecclesiastic tradition.  The Rhine River may be the central metaphor of the symphony, but the majestic Cologne cathedral is the spiritual focus, here.

The last movement is a spirited romp, with two dancing themes that cascade towards the conclusion.  A stately pronouncement from the brass section briefly interrupts the dash to the end, and Schumann’s cheerful trip up the Rhine to Cologne joyfully concludes.  The sad dementia that ultimately ended his life is thankfully little in evidence in this, one of his happiest times.

 –Wm. E. Runyan

 © 2018 William E. Runyan