En fantastisk symfoni av en fabelaktig komponist.
Alex Ross skriver flg:
Sibelius, in his Fourth Symphony, completed in 1911, presented his listeners with music as tensely forbidding as anything from the European continent at the time. (Perhaps the most searching rendition of this symphony on disk is Osmo Vänskäs, with the Lahti Symphony, on the Bis label. Herbert von Karajans recordings of the last four symphonies, on D.G., remain satisfying, and Leif Segerstam recently conducted a superb complete cycle for Ondine.) Sibelius wrote the Fourth in the wake of several risky operations on his throat, where a tumor was growing. His doctors instructed him to give up drinking, which he agreed to do, although he resumed in 1915. The temporary loss of alcoholmy most faithful companion, he later called itmay have contributed to the claustrophobic grimness of the music, which, at the same time, bespoke a liberated intellect. The first few bars of the symphony extrapolate a new dimension in musical time. The opening notes, scored darkly for cellos, basses, and bassoons, are C, D, F-sharp, Ean ambiguous whole-tone collection. It feels like the beginning of a major thematic statement, but it gets stuck on F-sharp and E, which oscillate and fade away. Meanwhile, the durations of the notes lengthen by degrees, from quarter notes to dotted quarters and then to half notes. Its as if a foreign body were exerting gravitational force on the music, slowing it down.
The narrative of the Fourth is circular rather than linear; it keeps revisiting the same insoluble conflicts. An effort at establishing F major as the key of the initially sunnier-sounding second movement founders on an immovable obstacle in the form of the note B-natural, after which there is a palpable shrug of defeat. The third movement dramatizes an attempt to build, note by note, a solemn six-bar theme of funerary character; the first attempt falters after three bars, the second after five, the third after four, the fourth after three. The fifth attempt proceeds with vigor but seems to go on too long, sprawling through seven bars without coming to a logical conclusion. Finally, with an audible grinding of the teeth, the full orchestra plays the theme in a richly harmonized guise. Then uncertainty steals back in.
The finale thins out as it goes along, as if random pages of the orchestral parts had blown off the music stands. This is music facing extinction, a premonition of the silence that would envelop the composer two decades later. Erik Tawaststjerna, Sibeliuss biographer, reveals that the middle section of the movement is based on sketches that Sibelius made for a vocal setting of Poes The Raven, in a German translation. It is easy to see why a man of Sibeliuss psychological makeup would have been drawn to its melancholia. The German translation follows the rhythm of the original, so Sibeliuss music can be matched up with lines in Poes poem. Softly crying flute and oboe lines in the epilogue fit the famous words Quoth the Raven Nevermore. The symphony closes with blank-faced chords that are given the dynamic marking mezzofortehalf-loud. The instruction is surprising. Most of the great Romantic symphonies end with fortissimo affirmations. Wagner operas and Strauss tone poems often close pianissimo, whether in blissful or tragic mood. Sibeliuss Fourth ends not with a bang or a whimper but with a leaden thud.
Les hele artikkelen om Sibelius her:
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2007/07/sibelius-chapte.html
eller enda bedre; kjøp den kritikerroste boka hans
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rest-Noise-Listening-Twentieth-Century/dp/1841154768/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227431336&sr=8-2
en veldig flott og lettlest innføring til den klassiske musikken i forrige århundre