Rhythm of Sibelius: Review and More

Fabulous Flight to Finland—and Beyond!

By Bryce Christensen

Through the magical levitation of music, conductor Xun Sun and the musicians of the Orchestra of Southern Utah (OSU) transported hundreds of enchanted concert-goers from their seats in Cedar City’s Heritage Center to the beautiful forests of Finland in the November12th concert dedicated to “The Rhythm of Sibelius.”  Commemorating the birth of the great violinist and composer Jean Silbelius, born 150 years ago in December of 1865, this concert celebrated the stellar Finnish artist’s achievement with a trio of his works: Symphony No. 6, Valse Triste, and Finlandia.

Beginning the evening with one of Sibelius’ less familiar numbers, the orchestra opened with the spare, even severe clarity of Symphony No. 6, a composition that Sibelius himself described as a work of “cold spring water,” a work that suggested to him “the scent of the first snow.” Drawing from the intense inspiration Sibelius found in the forest clearing that he called “the Temple,” this lean symphony tightens its cadences in the first movement into an intense tautness, relaxing briefly into a liquid interlude, before again tightening into a nervous fretting, then repeatedly swelling but breaking off in expectant pauses.  In the second movement, the strings and winds maintain a rapid, high-pitched pulse, while the brass and percussion instruments mark out a subterranean heartbeat of buried energies.  The fourth movement establishes a colloquy between different segments of the orchestra.  First the violins are answered by the violas, cellos, basses, and winds; then, the brasses and percussion instruments speak their piece.  The orchestral conversation continues, the lines of groups speaking together shifting and sliding, as the instrumental voices overlap in a rich counterplay, before finally tapering into the harmony of silence.

After the intermission, the musical spell that had conveyed the audience to Scandinavia gave way to a quite different enchantment, one that spirited the Heritage Center and all its occupants across thousands of miles to China.  Unexpected but delightfully piquant, this shift was effected through a narrative musical number entitled Little Sisters on the Grassland, by Zu Quiang and Liu Dehai. Contrasting sharply with the taut beauties of the evening’s first number, this much more variable and richly textured number featured the exceptional talents of guest soloist Xinwen Fu, who played a classical Chinese instrument called the pipa, a stringed instrument somewhat like the lute.  Fu’s fingers fairly flew as she coaxed from her instrument the musical story of how two doughty Chinese country girls brave a fierce snowstorm to save the animals of the family farm.  Playing now in solo, now with the accompaniment of the orchestra, musically enacting a drama growing ever more kinetic, Fu transfixed the audience with her dazzling skill on a her wonder-working instrument.

But when Fu had taken her last bows, Sibelius’ homeland reasserted itself, as Xun Sun and the orchestra performed Siblelius’ Valse Triste, originally composed as part of a play written by Sibelius’ brother but later attracting listeners as a stand-alone concert number.  Opening with slow, even lugubrious beat, this Sibelius composition quickens to an aery gracefulness.  But its waltz cadence never quite escapes the shadow of a pervasive sadness.  That shadow indeed deepens as the waltz rhythm accelerates—before finally dissolving in the dark tranquility of a mournful absence. 

The final, and probably most famous, of the numbers featured on this memorable night, Finlandia swells with the composer’s deep emotional attachment to his homeland.  Originally forbidden by Russian censors to give his work any name that might stir Finnish restiveness, Sibelius camouflaged his musical dynamite in its earliest performances with innocuous-sounding names, such as Happy Feelings at the Awakening of Finnish Spring and A Scandinavian Choral March.  But the hearts of Finnish patriots recognized their deepest national longings in this composition’s romantic chafing against all bounds.  And something of those longings resonated with the enraptured listeners gathered in Cedar City’s Heritage Center, enraptured by a marvelous composition superbly rendered, redolent with Finland’s regal pine forests and majestic landscapes.  Beginning with notes of angry brooding, dark like a storm about to break, Finlandia threatens tumult, as the piercing lightning of the brass instruments periodically breaks through.  But then the tumult clears, as a majestic melody of national pride coalesces, firmly asserting an embattled people’s undying sense of self-possession.  When the music reaches the transcendent sublimity of Finlandia’s later passages, both Finnish and Americans hearts indeed surmount all oppressive constraints, soaring to a longed-for freedom from all earthly tethers.  Many in the audience recognized in this celestial concluding section the strains sublimely repurposed in the Christian hymn “Be Still, My Soul,” with lyrics by Katharina A. von Schlegel.

As the concert drew to a close, a grateful audience rose to its feet to applaud the conductor and musicians who had transported them around the world in an hour and a half, lifting their hearts and thrilling their spirits with music that not only spanned the world but also ranged across the musical repertoire.  For if this concert demonstrated anything it was that Cedar City is blessed with musicians whose talents enable them to play very different kinds of music in a single evening, and to interpret each kind with sensitive attunement to tone and nuance. 

Conductor Xun Sun deserves high praise for putting together such a bold program, and all of the musicians who performed under his direction merit sustained applause for so fully mastering that program.  It was a planet-spanning program in which—as OSU President Harold Shirley noted in opening remarks—East met West.

Also praiseworthy is the sponsor for the evening, Melinda Wagner, who generously underwrote the evening in memory of her father, Orien Dalley, an outstanding music educator who was a good friend of Sibelius’ and who donated many of the composer’s manuscripts, now in holdings at Southern Utah University. 

Design by Rollan Fell

More information and listening links: http://osulistening.blogspot.com/2015/10/celebrate-150th-anniversary-of-jean.html

Program at http://www.orchestraofsouthernutah.org/concerts/rhythm-sibelius

Concert CDs and DVDs available, recorded by Steve Swift and Larry Life.
Order form: http://www.orchestraofsouthernutah.org/concert_order_form?print=1

Xinwen Fu, guest artist

Celebrating 150 years of Jean Sibelius, born in 1865.