Tune in every day at 1:00 PM when host Chris Wolf, will feature a different Tone Poem by the Finnish composer.

 

So what IS a 'symphonic tone poem'?

It is a piece of orchestral or concert band music, usually in a single continuous section (a movement) that illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source.

 

Where does it come from?  Well . . . blame Beethoven.

 Ludwig van Beethoven (December 17, 1770 – March 26, 1827)

 

In the second quarter of the 19th century, the future of the symphonic genre came into doubt. Although many composers continued to write symphonies during the 1820s and 30s, there was a growing sense that these works just could not measure up to Beethoven's. Now, the real question wasn't so much whether symphonies could still be written, but whether the genre could continue to flourish and grow. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and Niels Gade achieved successes with their symphonies, putting at least a temporary stop to the debate as to whether the genre was dead.  Nevertheless, composers increasingly turned to the "more compact form" of the concert overture as a way to blend musical, narrative and pictoral ideas. Examples included Mendelssohn's overtures A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) and The Hebrides (1830).

 

Who was the first to write a tone poem?

Franz Liszt.

                                  

                                                 Franz Liszt in 1858

The Hungarian composer was the first to expand single-movement works beyond the concert overture form. Lisz wanted to combine the programmatic qualities of overtures, which were meant to inspire listeners to imagine scenes, images, or moods, wih a scale and musical complexity normally reserved for the opening movement of classical symphonies.

 

WAS he the first though?

Interesting fact.  Franco-Belgian composer César Franck wrote an orchestral piece based on Victor Hugo's poem Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne. The work exhibits characteristics of a symphonic poem, and some musicologists consider it the first of its genre, preceding Liszt's compositions. However, Franck did not publish or perform his piece; neither did he set about defining the genre. Liszt's determination to explore and promote the symphonic poem gained HIM recognition as the genre's inventor.

 

So where does Jean Sibelius fit into all of this?

Jean Sibelius showed a great affinity for tone poems. He wrote well over a dozen symphonic poems and numerous shorter works. They spanned his entire career, from En Saga (1892) to Tapiola (1926), expressing more clearly than anything else his identification to Finland and its mythology. The Kalevala provided ideal episodes and texts for musical setting.  This, coupled with Sibelius's natural aptitude for symphonic writing, allowed him to write taut, organic structures for many of these works, especially Tapiola (1926). Pohjola's Daughter (1906), which Sibelius called a "symphonic fantasy", is the most closely dependent on its program while also showing a sureness of outline rare in other composers.  

 

MONDAY:

We begin with Lemminkäinen in Tuonela. This tone poem comes from The Lemminkäinen Suite (also called the Four Legends, or Four Legends from the Kalevala). It was written by Sibelius in the early 1890s which forms his opus 22. It was originally conceived as a mythological opera, Veneen luominen (The Building of the Boat), on a scale matching those by Richard Wagner.  Sibelius later changed his musical goals and the work became an orchestral piece in four movements. The suite is based on the character Lemminkäinen from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. The piece can also be considered a collection of symphonic poems.

Lemminkäinen in Tuonela is based on Runos 14 ("Elk, horse, swan") and 15 ("Resurrection"). Lemminkäinen is in Tuonela, the land of the dead, to shoot the Swan of Tuonela to be able to claim the daughter of Louhi, mistress of the Northland, in marriage. However, the blind man of the Northland kills Lemminkäinen, whose body is then tossed in the river and then dismembered. Lemminkäinen's mother learns of his death, travels to Tuonela, recovers his body parts, reassembles him and restores him to life.

 

TUESDAY:

Sir Colin Davis conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Nightride and Sunrise ---a symphonic poem composed by Jean Sibelius in 1908. Sibelius gave different accounts about where the inspiration for this music came from. He told Karl Ekman he was inspired by his first visit to the Colosseum in Rome in 1901.  Years later he told  his secretary Santeri Levas, that it was a sledge ride from Helsinki to Kervo "at some time around the turn of the century", during which he saw a striking sunrise.

Sibelius scored it for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns (doubled if possible in the Sunrise), 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, tambourine, triangle and strings.

He completed the score by November 1908 and sent the manuscript to the conductor Alexander Siloti, who led the first performance in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1909. The reviews for that first performance were not good at all! One critic wrote about Siloti's conducting as well. He described it as "slack and monotonous". Another comment from Novoye Vremya was quoted as asking "Who is actually riding, and why?" .

Nightride and Sunrise represents a subjective, spiritual experience of nature by "an ordinary man." It is one of his most atmospheric, yet stark pieces of descriptive writing.

 

 

WEDNESDAY:

We continue with a tone poem Sibelius wrote in 1926 called Tapiola --- which literaly means "Realm of Tapio". Tapiola portrays Tapio, the animating forest spirit mentioned throughout the Kalevala, lurking behind the stark Finnish pine-forests that enveloped Sibelius's isolated home Ainola outside Järvenpää.  Hunters prayed to him before a hunt. His wife is the goddess of the forest, Mielikki. He was the father of Annikki, Tellervo, Nyyrikki (the god of hunting), and Tuulikki.  Tapio has a beard of lichen and eyebrows of moss.

 

                                             

                                                                              (tumblr.com)

 

The piece came from a commission from Walter Damrosch for the New York Philharmonic Society and it was premiered on December 26, 1926.

When asked by the publisher to clarify the work's program, Sibelius responded by supplying a quatrain:

Widespread they stand, the Northland's dusky forests,Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams;Within them dwells the Forest's mighty God,And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets.
Tapiola was Sibelius's last major work, though he lived for another thirty years. He began working on an Eighth Symphony, but he is said to have burned the sketches after becoming unhappy with the work.

The first recording of Tapiola was made by Robert Kajanus conducting the London Symphony Orchestra for HMV in June 1932 at Abbey Road Studio 1 

In 1953 Herbert von Karajan conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in the first of his four recordings of the work. Interesting fact: Sibelius regarded Karajan as "the only one who truly understands my work."

Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recorded the music in 1955 in one of the first stereophonic recordings made by EMI Classics.

We're going to hear a performance recorded by Eduard Van Beinum conducting the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Below is a snippet from a 1985 documentary by filmmaker Christopher Nupen and Allegro Films about Sibelius where he talks about Tapiola.

 

 

THURSDAY:

Today we're going to visit a tone poem taken from Sibelius' Kullervo, Op. 7 ----a suite of symphonic movements often referred to as a "choral symphony".  There isn't a traditional symphonic structure in this work. There are  five movements that constitute a set of related but independent tone poems based on the character of Kullervo in the epic poem Kalevala. Each of the five movements presents a part of Kullervo's life. Movements one, two, and four are instrumental. The third and fifth movements contain sung dialogue from the epic poem.

 

                                             

                                                             Kullervo's Curse by the Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

                                                            It depicts a scene from the Kalevala in which Kullervo curses a

                                            herd of cows, turning them into bears who attack a woman who tormented him.

 

We are going to hear Sir Collin Davis conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the the third movement, or tone poem --- Kullervo and his Sister . The baritone (Peter Mattei) and mezzo-soprano (Monica Group) represent the protagonist and his sister, while the male chorus  (London Symphony Chorus) sets the scene and offers commentary. Kullervo encounters three women and attempts, unsuccessfully, to seduce them, before raping the third, only to realize too late that she is his long-lost sister. When she learns the truth, she commits suicide by leaping into a stream and drowning. Kullervo laments his crime and his sister's death.

The full suite had only four more performances in Sibelius' lifetime. The last was on March 12, 1893. Sibelius refused to publish it until, in 1957 at the very end of his life, after he had re-orchestrated the final "lament" section of Kullervo and his Sister, he gave permission for it to be published after his death.

Isolated movements were performed during Sibelius' lifetime. The fourth movement was performed two days after the premiere and again in 1905 and in 1955. Kullervo and his Sister was presented as part of the centenary celebration of the publication of "Kalevala" in 1935 and in 1958, a year after Sibelius's death, with Jussi Jalas, Sibelius' son-in-law, conducting the work.

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullervo_(Sibelius)