GHCD 2341 Secure E-shop Broadcast & Review	STOKOWSKI SIBELIUS Sibelius & Stokowski Helsinki City Symphony Orchestra Live Recording - 17 June 1953 Finlandia, Op. 26/7 Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39 -IV. Finale (Quasi una fantasia) – Andante – Allegro molto come prima–Andante (ma non troppo) – Più largamente poco a poco Pelléas and Mélisande, Op. 46 - No.6 Pastorale Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105

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From the clutch of great composers born within the eight-year period 1857-1865, whose contributions to the standard orchestral repertoire were indeed profound – Elgar, Maher, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Nielsen and Sibelius – it is the music of the last named and last born who, because of his longevity (he died in 1957 at the age of almost 92), found his music constantly programmed by the world’s orchestras during his lifetime. Not that the orchestral music of those contemporaries of his ever entirely left the repertoire, but – for a variety of reasons, including premature death, fashion, the lack of consistent champions and the seismic consequences (in every area of human existence) of two world wars, affected their reputations more than it ever seemed to do with Sibelius – at least, during his lifetime.

Equally, however, not every aspect of his output achieved repertoire status (it is only in quite recent years, for example, that the full extent of his work has been made generally available on disc), but Sibelius’s seven symphonies and his other significant orchestral music entered the international repertoire virtually from the start, and during his lifetime never left it.  In this regard, Sibelius was aided by a number of international conductors who constantly championed his music and in many instances recorded it. Sibelius also enjoyed the support of important critics and writers on music. In addition, Sibelius never wrote for large orchestral forces, in the way that Strauss or Mahler did, such as made – especially in the post-World War I straightened circumstances of the 1920s – it a prohibitively expensive undertaking to programme such works, and Sibelius’s output was not, essentially, either interrupted or brought to an end by the duration, and consequential impact, of that War.

Sibelius’s output did come to an end, of course, around 1930, being brought about by the cessation of his own creative inclinations and not through any external factors.  During the remaining 27 years of his life he produced very little music, none of it of lasting significance. But by 1930, Sibelius’s lasting reputation was firmly established, and international conductors such as Robert Kajanus, Serge Koussevitaky, Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Henry Wood – amongst many others – frequently played his works.

For Leopold Stokowski, born in London in 1882, Sibelius – 16 years his senior – was always a contemporary composer, not a figure from the past whose music should always be performed as through the refining process of reinterpretation, for – as Lord Kenneth Clark stated in his masterly study of Leonardo da Vinci – ‘great art most always be reinterpreted for each generation.   Stokowski, because of the period into which he was born and grew up, had no need of such reinterpretation; as with (for examples) Koussevitsky and Beecham, with this composer his interpretations were essentially fixed very early on, and – if recorded evidence is the guide – they remained constant for pretty much throughout his own long life (Stokowski died in 1977 aged 95); one of his very last recordings was of Sibelius’s First Symphony.

Although Stokowski’s discography was exceptionally large and, in repertoire terms, commensurately vast, in strict commercial recording terms he did not leave an integral set of the seven Sibelius Symphonies (nor, for that matter, did any of those contemporaries of his already mentioned), but when – as in this instance, an all-Sibelius concert given in Helsinki in 1955 – recordings of his conducting come to light in repertoire that did not feature in his commercial discography, exceptional interest must ascribe to them.  And we are doubly fortunate in having two symphonies and other of Sibelius’s shorter orchestral works in the same concert given by a Finnish orchestra under Stokowski’s direction, when the composer was still alive and was, by most accounts, in full possession of his faculties. This is not to emphasize any extra-musical emotional attachments that may or may not apply to these performances, but in pointing out such factors, there is no doubt that an element surrounds this concert such as would not have been the case had it taken place ten or twenty years later – other than the conductor’s own increasing age. Such a comment ought not to appear too fanciful: imagine, for a moment, that we possessed broadcast recordings of symphonies or other orchestral music by, say, Tchaikovsky or Brahms, conducted by acknowledged great interpreters of their music, made when the composers were still alive and possibly giving their approval of the performances – such aspects of ‘authenticity’ which we, in our history-obsessed age, seek to recreate, would be there for us to experience – as they are, self-evidently, in this broadcast concert from 1955.

What, precisely, therefore are those aspects of ‘authenticity’ (greater interpretative insights) and how do they differ from performances recreated for later generations? We have various types of Sibelius’s orchestral writing in this programme: the two symphonies, Finlandia, and excerpts from the incidental music to Pelleas et Melisande. Coincidentally with Sibelius’s growth as a composer of symphonies, his series of orchestral works – variously subtitles as ‘tone-poems’ or (as in the case of Pohjola’s Daughter) a ‘symphonic fantasia’, or (as with the examples of En Saga or Finlandia) lack any subtitle at all – reveal parallel modes of expression, the subtitles of which were often, erroneously, considered interchangeable or of no deeper significance, often leading to the blanket application of a genre title that Sibelius himself never adopted – ‘symphonic poem’.

The words ‘symphony’ or ‘symphonic’, in Sibelius’s usage of them, indicates that the internal movement of tonality lay at the heart of such works, in a way that does not apply to his ‘tone-poems’.  For example, his last large-scale orchestral work, Tapiola, from 1925, is in B minor, and depicts a vast north Scandinavian forest. Essentially, of course, a forest cannot move – such life as it possesses takes place on the one hand over vast millennia, profoundly slowly, and on the other is exemplified by animal and plant life, as affected by natural events – for example, a storm. As the forest itself is immovable, the tonality does not change in this work.  The tone-poems of Sibelius therefore are as close as he got in his output to a form of Romanticism – extra-musical inspiration that demands expression in musical terms.  But Pohjola’s Daughter depicts more readily identifiable movement, predicated upon a tonally more fluid basis. In the case of Finlandia this relatively short orchestral piece would seem, on the basis of our observations, to fall conclusively into the ‘tone-poem’ genre; and the even shorter individual movement from the Pelleas et Melisande incidental music (not Sibelius’s sole contribution to theatre music) sees the composer as a master of small forms as well as of large ones.

Such subtle differentiations in expression demand such differentiations in approach from the conductor, and whilst even his sternest critics would not deny Stokowski the extraordinary ability to draw from the orchestra an almost tangible sense of colour, in all its forms, a lesser-appreciated, but no less important (perhaps more so) feature is the conductor’s mastery of  large-scale forms. In this concert, we experience both, occasionally combined, but always placed at the service of the music of his great contemporary.

This concert is a remarkable demonstration of Stokowski’s qualities. It shows his grasp of Sibelius’s music in various forms, not least in the challenging choice of music itself. The programming of two Sibelius symphonies in one concert is not so greatly unusual today, but the choice of the First and Seventh is wholly exceptional, for although Sibelius’s symphonic music was composed over a period of just 25 years, this is not – of itself – so unusual in musical history, for Beethoven’s nine              

symphonies were written over a similar length of time, as were the symphonies of Bruckner, Dvorak and Mahler. But the differences between Sibelius’s First and Seventh symphonies are inherently greater than between Mahler’s First and Tenth (in fact, his eleventh) symphonies: it is a question of the internalisation of the composers’ expressive qualities, rather than solely through external structuralisation (originally, Mahler’s First Symphony had five movements; his Tenth also has five movements).

Against such a background, the challenges of Sibelius’s music, in all its forms, are considerably greater than is generally appreciated, and in Stokowski’s response to those challenges we hear again his qualities as a great conductor. Taking the symphonies first, it is important to grasp that the E minor, although the first in the cycle, is already music of the true Sibelius; there is nothing immature or uncertain in this work, a score which – if influences ate to be sought – emanates more from the Russian nationalist school rather than the Austro-Germanic line. In certain respects the influence of other E minor symphonies – Tchaikovsky’s Fifth and Dvorak’s New World – the latter works in the use of timpani in the Scherzo, and in the general avoidance of sentimentality (although for many conductors this is an irresistible temptation) can be discerned. The First Symphony also exhibits that rocky strength which is the hallmark of the Nordic genius, a strength that Stokowski seizes upon with a rare mastery, and which the Helsinki orchestra reveals as naturally as the shear Scandinavian air which this music breathes, alongside its infectious ardour. As a single demonstration of this in this performance, the central climax of the first movement is magnificently achieved.   In the Seventh Symphony, Stokowski delivers one of the most vital readings of this constantly-amazing work, the conductor exhibiting such a strong grip on the score as mastery of its overall plan as to be completely convincing. The Finnish orchestra plays this spacious and noble music by their great compatriot and contemporary with profound understanding.

In Finlandia, Stokowski treats the score with a rare depth of understanding, not once slipping into the brutal approach of many conductors; the Pelleas et Melisande music to Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, composed in 1905, sits more readily alongside that provided by Faure in 1898 than in Schoenberg’s vast symphonic poem of 1904 – still less, of course, than with Debussy’s opera of 1902. Stokowski treats these miniatures with exquisite taste, showing them to be as typical of the composer as his mightiest symphonic masterpieces.    Robert Matthew-Walker © 2008 

Page revised Thursday April 24 2008