Page 22 - 2019 MW1 Program

WSO8 program notes (cont.) of the most delicate and beautiful melodies in the literature. The violin then embellishes this melody with arabesques (florid ornamentation of a theme), maintaining its special relationship with the oboe throughout. The middle of the movement becomes more intense and dramatic, but Brahms never loses sight of the theme. The fiery rondo-finale exploits the melodies and rhythms played by itinerant Rom (Gypsy) musicians in the cafés of central Europe. It is one of the few places where Joachim’s intervention attenuated the difficulties for the violinist. He managed to get Brahms to moderate the move- ment’s tempo by adding “ma non troppo” (but not too much) to the tempo indication Vivace. symphony no. 2 in d major, op. 43 Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Sweden relinquished Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809, where it became an autonomous duchy with significant control over its own affairs. Beginning in 1870, however, these privileges were gradually taken away under the program of “Russifying” the many ethnic minorities within the Russian Empire. While Swedish had been the language of the educated middle class, Russian repression aroused such strong nationalist feelings that it sparked a revival of the Finnish language. Jean Sibelius was born into this nationalistic environment and in 1876 enrolled in the first grammar school to teach in Finnish. Sibelius was by no means a child prodigy. He started playing piano at nine, didn't like it and took up the violin at fourteen. His ambition was to become a concert violinist and all his life he regretted not following his dream. He had also begun toying with composition as early as ten. His first success as a composer came in 1892 with Kullervo, Op. 7, a nationalistic symphonic poem/cantata that met with great success but was never again performed in his lifetime. During the next six years he composed numerous nationalistic pageants, symphonic poems and vocal works, mostly based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In order to enable him to work undisturbed, the Finnish administrative government gave him a pension for life in 1897. For the next 28 years he composed the symphonies and tone poems that made him famous. But in 1925, at the age of 60, he essentially abandoned composing probably as the result of the ravages of alcoholism and the bipolar disorder that had plagued him throughout his life. He remained silent until his death 32 years later. Writing symphonies was for Sibelius a lifelong preoccupation that he described as “confessions of faith from different periods of my life.” Composed in the winter 1901-02, close on the heels of his patriotic Finlandia, the Symphony No. 2, with its blazingly affirmative conclusion and optimism, reflected the nationalistic spirit of the time. His statement that all his music was either consciously or unconsciously programmatic opened up a Pandora’s box for interpreta- tion. The public’s belief that the Symphony contained a fundamental political message made it an instant success despite the fact that Sibelius himself ascribed no program to it. The first movement opens with a lyrical theme by a pair of oboes in their middle range accompanied by the lower strings, creating the dark, cold sound characteristic of Sibelius, which hints at the stark Finnish climate and landscape. The movement consists of a string of melodic fragments, rather than full themes, woven together into a classic sonata form.