program notes {
About the concert:
Symphony No. 7 in C Major
Jean Sibelius
Born December 8, 1865 in Hämeenlinna,
Finland; died September 20, 1957
in Järvenpää, Finland
As Jean Sibelius grew older and his
symphonic craft more sophisticated,
composing actually became more difficult
for him. As he struggled to complete his
seventh and last symphony in the winter
of 1924, he wrote, “I am on the wrong
rails. Alcohol to calm my nerves and state
of mind. How dreadful old age is for a
composer! Things don’t go as quickly as
they used to, and self-criticism grows to
impossible proportions.” He composed
through the night, and his wife, Aino,
would find him in the morning slumped
over the score at the dining-room table
with a bottle of liquor beside him.
Sibelius suffered from black depressions
throughout his life, and heavy alcoholic
consumption only compounded the problem. Just two years after he completed
the Seventh Symphony, these demons
plus nagging self-criticism of everything
he wrote would prematurely silence him,
even though he lived on for another 31
years to the venerable age of 91.
Despite the struggle, the Seventh Symphony turned out to be one of his most
extraordinary works, taking his unique
approach to constructing a symphony to
its ultimate level. Sibelius had long since
rejected the traditional symphonic structure of four movements following conventional forms such as sonata, scherzo, and
rondo. Instead he believed the symphony
was like a river and that each river created
its own shape. “The movement of the
river water is the flow of the musical ideas
and the river-bed that they form is the
symphonic structure.”
Thus the Seventh Symphony emerged
as one great movement moving in waves
of accelerating and decelerating tempos. It
grew organically through the evolution of
the most elemental musical ideas. In fact,
there is only one true theme here, proclaimed three times by solo trombone and
other brass and serving as mighty pillars
supporting and shaping the symphony’s
structure. And Sibelius uses the brass
section only for this theme; otherwise he
concentrates on strings and woodwinds,
setting their very different colors in opposition rather than blending them. Like
many of Sibelius’ greatest works, there is
an underlying feeling of the human being
standing in wonder before a big, powerful,
and unknowable natural world.
The symphony begins with very basic
musical ingredients: a rumble of the timpani and a slow scale in the strings (scale
patterns will underlie most of the melodic
material) ascending to a fateful, mysterious harmony. A fluttering-birds motive
appears in the woodwinds. Rising and
falling scales crisscross, and the woodwind birds cry out with forlorn power.
Now a magnificent, warm-toned passage
for divided strings expands the scales of
the opening into rich counterpoint. This
culminates in the first appearance of the
epic trombone-brass theme in the home
key of C Major.
JOIN US
FOR THESE
EXCITING
CONCERTS!
THE COLORS OF SOUND
Saturday, May 9, 2015: 8pm
Pack your bags for this musical journey,
using a map of soundscapes in the
atmospheric experience of Bolcom’s
Symphony No. 3. Ravel’s dazzling Piano
Concerto provides a vibrant conclusion to
this colorful program.
FAMILY FUN CONCERT
Sunday, May 10, 2015: 3pm
A Wizard is magically transported onto
the stage. Unsure of how he got there, the
conductor and orchestra try to find a way
to send him home.
Concerts at Gordon Center For Performing Arts,
3506 Gwynnbrook Avenue, Owings Mills
Order your tickets today: Visit
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