Composer · Late Romantic
Jean Sibelius
1865–1957 · Finnish
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) is Finland’s greatest composer and one of the supreme symphonists of the twentieth century. His music, above all the seven symphonies and tone poems such as Finlandia and Tapiola, became inseparable from Finland’s emerging national identity during its struggle against Russian domination, and he was revered as a national hero in his own lifetime. His style evolved from late-Romantic richness toward an increasingly concentrated, organic and original conception of symphonic form, in which themes seem to grow and fuse like living things, shot through with the cold light and vast spaces of the Nordic landscape. Famously, after completing the Seventh Symphony, the incidental music to The Tempest and the tone poem Tapiola in the mid-1920s, he fell almost completely silent for the last thirty years of his life: the ‘silence of Järvenpää’.
Works
- Night Ride and Sunrise, Op. 55 1
- Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 1
- Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82 3
- Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105 5
- The Oceanides, Op. 73 1
- The Swan of Tuonela, from ‘Lemminkäinen Suite’, Op. 22 1
- Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 7
Performed at
Upcoming
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Adès’s In Seven Days with Chamayou, and Sibelius’s Fifth Nørgård · Adès · Sibelius
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Adès Conducts Sibelius, Saariaho and His Own ‘America’ Sibelius · Saariaho · Adès
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Jansen’s Dubugnon Premiere, and Vaughan Williams’s Antartica Sibelius · Dubugnon · Vaughan Williams
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Klaus Mäkelä conducts Beethoven’s Seventh, Lisa Batiashvili plays Sibelius Schumann · Sibelius · Beethoven
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Sakari Oramo and Vilde Frang: Dean, Britten and Sibelius Dean · Britten · Sibelius
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Klaus Mäkelä in Barcelona: Schumann’s Manfred, Lisa Batiashvili plays Sibelius, Dvořák’s Seventh Schumann · Sibelius · Dvorak
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Lahav Shani and Lisa Batiashvili at the Salzburg Easter Festival: Debussy, Sibelius and Pictures at an Exhibition Debussy · Sibelius · Mussorgsky
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The Fickle Sea: Alan Gilbert conducts Debussy, Britten, Sibelius and Clyne Clyne · Sibelius · Britten · Debussy
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Symphonic Landscapes: Kirill Petrenko and Leif Ove Andsnes in Sibelius, Grieg and the Pastoral Symphony Sibelius · Grieg · Beethoven
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Klaus Mäkelä and Yunchan Lim: Larcher, Rachmaninoff’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Sibelius’s Seventh Larcher · Rachmaninoff · Sibelius
Past guides
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Northern Visions Lutosławski · Debussy · Sibelius
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Sunrise and Northern Light Kurtág · Strauss · Sibelius
Sources 1
- Jean Sibelius, Wikipedia