räsonanz – Lucerne 2022
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) is not only considered the most outstanding figure in Finnish music. With his compositional oeuvre – above all his seven symphonies, violin concerto and symphonic tone poems – he also holds a unique position in European music history at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Sibelius was born in the same decade as Puccini, Mahler, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Schoenberg, at a time when his homeland Finland was politically dominated by Russia and culturally by Sweden. Nevertheless, he remained an exceptional figure among these composers: while his early work was clearly influenced by the German and Russian schools – especially Brahms and Tchaikovsky – the tonal language of his mature compositions cannot be classified.
In Scandinavia, Great Britain and America, the work of the Finnish composer has always been unreservedly recognised and performed. In Germany, where many of his compositions have been published, he has not always received the same attention. It was not until the late 1960s that a more open-minded appreciation of the composer began to emerge in Germany.
Jean Sibelius’ relationship with Germany began in the 19th century, when the composer travelled by steamboat from Helsinki to Berlin in 1889 to study composition and music. This study trip was of great importance for Finnish music history, because Sibelius adopted elements from the European symphonic tradition, among other things. Sibelius’ musical role models, such as Mozart and Mendelssohn, also came from the German tradition.
The composer was so self-critical that he destroyed his eagerly awaited Eighth Symphony, which he had begun in the late 1920s, with his own hands; he had practically stopped composing 30 years before his death.