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.
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