Post by erik on Jun 3, 2023 19:05:02 GMT -5
Finland's greatest composer Jean Sibleius is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight with a short orchestral piece that is among his most popular, and among the most overtly tragic in classical music history.
Siibelius: VALSE TRISTE, OP. 44
Though he was often given to craggy and austere moods that often reflected the icy winters of his native Finland, and even though he retired from music during the last thirty-two years of his life, Jean Sibelius still remains Finland’s greatest composer. Many of his works reflected the national pride of his native country, especially against the ever-present encroachment of czarist Russia on its eastern border. Using typically large (but not necessarily Mahlerian-sized) orchestral forces, Sibelius managed to compose seven symphonies, all of which have remained part of the standard repertoire of Western classical music, with the Second and Fifth symphonies being among the most popular of their kind in the 20th century. But Sibelius could also dial back the largeness of his vision with shorter works that are just as significant to classical music as the symphonies and his nationalistic tone poem “Finlandia”. One such example of Sibelius in dial-back mode was his short but shuddering 1903 work “Valse Triste”. Originally written as part of the score of incidental music he had written for his brother-in-law Arnold Jarnefelt’s play “Kuolema” (the Finnish word for “Death”), the piece took on a life of its own as a concert piece about a son watching over his sick mother, who seems to have these strange visions of apparitions that she dances with, only to be met at the end by Death standing at the threshold. Scored for flute, clarinet, two French horns, strings, and a single timpani (the latter near the tragic conclusion), “Valse Triste” emerged as being among the most popular of all of Sibelius’ single-movement works, after “Finlandia”. The piece was used in a truly tragic part of director Bruno Bozzetto’s 1976 Italian animated film Allegro Non Troppo, a Fantasia-inspired movie, where a solitary cat wanders through the ruins of a large home where its family used to be.
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/HERBERT BLOMSTEDT (London/Decca)
Included:
SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN D MAJOR, OP. 43
TAPIOLA, OP. 112
Siibelius: VALSE TRISTE, OP. 44
Though he was often given to craggy and austere moods that often reflected the icy winters of his native Finland, and even though he retired from music during the last thirty-two years of his life, Jean Sibelius still remains Finland’s greatest composer. Many of his works reflected the national pride of his native country, especially against the ever-present encroachment of czarist Russia on its eastern border. Using typically large (but not necessarily Mahlerian-sized) orchestral forces, Sibelius managed to compose seven symphonies, all of which have remained part of the standard repertoire of Western classical music, with the Second and Fifth symphonies being among the most popular of their kind in the 20th century. But Sibelius could also dial back the largeness of his vision with shorter works that are just as significant to classical music as the symphonies and his nationalistic tone poem “Finlandia”. One such example of Sibelius in dial-back mode was his short but shuddering 1903 work “Valse Triste”. Originally written as part of the score of incidental music he had written for his brother-in-law Arnold Jarnefelt’s play “Kuolema” (the Finnish word for “Death”), the piece took on a life of its own as a concert piece about a son watching over his sick mother, who seems to have these strange visions of apparitions that she dances with, only to be met at the end by Death standing at the threshold. Scored for flute, clarinet, two French horns, strings, and a single timpani (the latter near the tragic conclusion), “Valse Triste” emerged as being among the most popular of all of Sibelius’ single-movement works, after “Finlandia”. The piece was used in a truly tragic part of director Bruno Bozzetto’s 1976 Italian animated film Allegro Non Troppo, a Fantasia-inspired movie, where a solitary cat wanders through the ruins of a large home where its family used to be.
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/HERBERT BLOMSTEDT (London/Decca)
Included:
SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN D MAJOR, OP. 43
TAPIOLA, OP. 112