It was thanks to his works inspired by the heroic tales in the Finnish national epic the Kalevala that his fellow countrymen began to be aware of the young composer Jean Sibelius. His dramatic Kullervo for orchestra, male choir, and two solo voices—lasting more than an hour and telling of an antihero of that name—was an imposing starting shot for the epic-based works that would ultimately color Sibelius’s whole career.
After Kullervo, Sibelius began work on an opera called The Building of the Boat, a work of Wagnerian proportions of tales from the Kalevala and its main character, wise old Väinämöinen. The years passed, Sibelius never finished the opera, and he became increasingly alienated from the Wagnerian ideals. In the end, he used some of the material for an orchestral suite in four movements about another character from the Kalevala: Lemminkäinen, a fiery-tempered man with an eye for the ladies.
Sibelius conducted the premiere of his Lemminkäinen Suite at a concert with the Helsinki Philharmonic Society (now the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra) in April 1896, but he was not satisfied with it and thereafter prohibited its performance. As late as 1939, he was still revising the score. Lemminkäinen is now one of his best-loved works.
Lemminkäinen is a symphonic poem about a young man who, having seduced the girls on an island, is forced to flee from their angry menfolk. He is assigned the task of capturing the swan of Tuonela (i.e., the underworld), but dies in the process. His mother brings him back to life with her love, and he embarks on a wild return. In the suite’s last movement, “Lemminkäinen’s Return,” the hero mounts his horse—as expressed in an English horn motif—and hastens home, exhausted but triumphant.
Kaija Saariaho is not only Finland’s best-known contemporary composer; she is also one of the most highly acclaimed composers in the world today. She has been the recipient of practically all the most prestigious prizes and awards for music, such as the Grawemeyer Award (2003), Sibelius Prize (2009), Léonie Sonning Music Prize (2011), Polar Music Prize (2013), Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2018), and the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale (2021). Her opera L’amour de loin won her a Grammy Award in 2011.
The vast and varied musical output of Saariaho is marked by a dreamy, airy quality and subtly shifting tones. This weightlessness is already reflected in the titles of such works as Asteroid 4179: Toutatis; Solar; Oi Kuu; Aer; Cloud Trio; and the Oiseaux (Birds) cycle. Aile du songe (Wing of Dream), to be heard this evening, was a joint commission from the Flanders Festival Ghent, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra for flutist Camilla Hoitenga.
Aile du songe is based on the collection Oiseaux by French Nobel Prize–winning poet Saint-John Perse, and describes the flight of birds and life’s mysteries in metaphors through an abstract and multidimensional language. The titles of the two main parts of the concerto, which is divided into descriptive sections, are borrowed from the poem. The first section is headed “Aérienne”: “In the Prélude, the flute gradually pervades the space and generates the orchestra’s music,” says Saariaho. In “Jardin des oiseaux” (“The Garden of Birds”), the flute interacts with individual instruments in the orchestra. “D’autres rives” compares the flute to a lone, high-flying bird whose shadow forms different images played by the strings over the unchanged landscape of the harp, celesta, and percussion.
The second part is called “Terrestre” and begins with “Oiseau dansant.” “It refers to an Aboriginal tale in which a virtuosic dancing bird teaches a whole village how to dance,” Saariaho explains. The piece ends with a musical invocation of a bird orbiting the Earth like a tiny satellite, as a synthesis of the previous aspects; then the sound of the flute slowly fades away.
Had Jean Sibelius not composed his seven symphonies, he might never have been more than one of the minor national treasures that abound in the historical annals of small countries. He was a true National Romantic and had, even before composing his symphonies, left a deep imprint on the Finnish DNA with his Kullervo, Lemminkäinen Suite, and En saga. But his first two symphonies, written around the turn of the century, introduced him to the world as a great new symphonist.
His First Symphony, written in 1899, was a turning point in that it incorporated elements already familiar abroad but still unknown in Finnish music. Plumbing the very depths of the Finnish soul, and a work of sometimes stark beauty, it made Sibelius a symphonist who caught the attention of the outside world and turned European eyes toward the Far North. The Second Symphony—composed between 1901 and 1902—took an even bigger step toward the international arena, and the idiom of Tchaikovsky in particular. Sibelius conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra (HPO) in the premiere of his Second Symphony in Helsinki on March 8, 1902. It has since been a “must” on the orchestra’s tours abroad, and the HPO has performed this symphony more than any other in its 140-year history.
Like Tchaikovsky decades before, Sibelius traveled to Italy. There, he became immersed in the story of the libertine Don Giovanni and mulled over the ominous, apocalyptic apparition that came to escort the Don to the underworld as punishment for his deeds. On his return to Finland, Sibelius completed his four-movement symphony. He insisted that it did not, as such, have any extra-musical associations, and that these had at most just fueled his own inspiration. The symphony does indeed resonate at a different frequency in every listener; some have described it as a shaman’s drumbeat that sends the Finns into a trance. Robert Kajanus, a conductor friend of Sibelius and founder of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, said that it aroused in the listener a picture of the future of an independent nation. Conductor Simon Parmet saw it as a song of praise for summer and the joy of life. For Sibelius himself, it was his “soul’s confession.”
—Jaani Länsiö (translation by Susan Sinisalo)