Originality is a hard concept to get a hold of—there is no yardstick for measuring it, by its very nature. This makes the evaluation of composers, the assessment of their influence and historical position, one of the most subjective areas of music history and criticism. Contemporary writers have become impatient with their predecessors’ habit of rating composers in terms of “importance” or “greatness” based, at least in part, on their originality. And then there is the issue of “unique voice”—is that the same as originality? Is there any good composer who lacks either one? Can “uniqueness” be evaluated?
A music festival such as Bard’s begins with a premise: composer X is significant enough
to merit being the focal point for nine concerts and five panel discussions spread out over two
weekends in August. If that composer’s fame is inextricably linked to the identity of an
emerging, hitherto marginal nationality, the issue of the composer’s stature (one of the greats?
eccentric individual? significant or insignificant historical byway?) becomes particularly
problematic. Consider a composer who will probably never be the subject of a festival at Bard:
Mussorgsky. He appeared to be a uniquely original and possibly amateurish eccentric, but his
influence has proven to be crucial for subsequent Russian music; try imagining Prokofiev or
Shostakovich without him. Sibelius is a larger figure relative to his national background: he is
the Finnish composer in the international repertory. What is his historical significance? As a
contemporary of the generation of ground-breaking modernists (Mahler, Debussy, Schoenberg,
Ives) can he be considered forward-looking? And has he provided a foundation for later
generations, Finnish or otherwise?
In the course of two weekends of close examination, the application of the metrics of
originality to Sibelius proved elusive. No one questioned that he is indeed one of the truly
unique musical voices, but no one could assert that he was a true modernist. I think the point
of view taken was that he would prove to be such in the long historical view (the one that has
not yet fully emerged) once we get over our infatuation with atonality and other novelties of
the early 20th century. But then, will he emerge as a true modernist or as a post-modern avatar
of neo-romanticism? It depends on which Sibelius you look at: the fiery post-Tchaikovsky
romantic of the Kullervo and first two numbered symphonies? the Finnish nationalist drawing
on or synthesizing a melodic style evocative of folk culture? the neo-classicist condensing his
forms and finding a unique harmonic language in the Third and Fourth Symphonies
respectively? or the eccentric withdrawing into a private world of nature contemplation and
idiosyncratic musical language as in the Seventh Symphony or the tone poem Tapiola, final
masterpieces preceding thirty years of compositional silence?
Hearing the music of Sibelius’s predecessors, teachers, and contemporaries made one
thing clear: none of them sounded like Sibelius at any stage. Neither did his Finnish
contemporaries Aarre Merikanto and Erkki Melartin, although they wrote fine music well worth
hearing. It is only when we get to the following generation, and expand the perspective
geographically, that we detect his influence on composers like Leevi Madetoja, Väinö Raitio,
Howard Hanson, Samuel Barber, and Ralph Vaughan-Williams. Had the Festival chosen to go
further beyond the time-span of Sibelius’ productive career (which ended in the late ‘20’s) we
might have heard his influence on subsequent generations of Finnish and other
Scandanavian/Baltic composers such as Uuno Klami, Vagn Holmboe, Kalevi Aho, Eino
Rautavaara, and even contemporaries like Kari Saariaho, Arvo Pärt, or Erkki-Sven Tüür.
Such a demonstration of Sibelius’s historical position would have supported one point
being made in the Festival: that Sibelius deserves to be considered a powerful founding
influence on later composers; but it would have undermined another: that Sibelius was not
really a regional figure, but rather, was part of a wider geographical culture that included
Russians (Rimsky-Korsakoff and Glazounov), Poles (Szymanowski), Italians (Ottorino Respighi),
Germans, Austrians, English, and even Australians (Percy Grainger). Despite his almost
immediate influence in the English-speaking countries, there seems little doubt that Sibelius’s
voice continues to resonate particularly strongly in areas geographically contiguous to Finland.
A similar controversy has existed around the music of a parallel figure nine years Sibelius’s
junior, Charles Ives. When Ives first emerged into larger public awareness around 1960, he was
mythologized as a founder of American music. This view was later attacked by scholars eager
to place him in an international context (connecting him to Debussy and Mahler among others.)
But subsequent generations of American composers from Copland to John Adams have laid
claim to Ives as an American musical avatar.
As usual, the Festival provided enormous collateral benefits. One was exposure to
Sibelius’s lesser-known works, often unjustly categorized as “ephemera.” The first revelation
occurred in the opening concert with a performance of four of the six “Humoresques” for violin
and orchestra from 1917. Although “lighter” in style than the symphonies or violin concerto,
and gesturally related to a virtuoso salon style, these wonderful works were fully identifiable as
being in Sibelius’s characteristic voice. The salon elements were assimilated so thoroughly that
one heard parody of an elegant and sophisticated sort not usually associated with Sibelius. The
violin writing was a fascinating blend of the idiosyncratic style of the Violin Concerto of a
decade earlier (rev. version 1905) with the floridity of more conventional showpieces; but there
was no disguising their individuality. In the accomplished rendition of soloist Henning
Kraggerud, one wondered why these works (and their two companions) are such concert
rarities, when we have to hear endless repetitions of Bruch’s G minor Concerto or the bon-bons
of Saint-Saens.
Another benefit was the chance to hear superb performances of songs and piano pieces
by Grieg. Both made strong impressions: the song set Haugtussa (The Mountain Maid) of 1895
by virtue of its emotional variety, vivid and imaginative accompaniments, and powerful drama;
and the selections from Slåtter Op. 72 for piano for their innovative harmonic language
(instantly recognizable as this composer) and colorful pianism. Grieg’s music, especially his
prolific output of songs and piano pieces, is too little known (as are the parallel genres of
Sibelius’s oeuvre) and the opportunity to hear them in strong serious performances was a
valuable surprise.
Equally valuable was the chance to experience the vocal artistry of mezzo-soprano Melis
Jaatinen who also performed sets of songs by Toivo Kuula, Tchaikovsky (in duet with Christine
Libor), and Sibelius. Jaatinen combined an extremely personable stage presence with warm
and directly communicative singing, an easy vocal technique, and mastery of sung Norwegian,
Finnish, Swedish, and Russian. She was one of the treasures of the Festival.
Listening to the early works of Sibelius in the context of his contemporaries revealed a
unique voice that was present from the start, whose issues of conciseness and formal
organization had yet to be sorted out and refined. The G minor Piano Quintet (1890) and the
“Kullervo” Symphony (actually an oratorio on a story from the Kalevala, 1891-2) reveal a
boldness and weight of utterance, a tendency toward sustained power and vehement
expression overriding finely articulated detail, which might be labeled a kind of primitivism
when compared with the music of his teachers from Berlin and Vienna. The works of Robert
Fuchs (String Trio, 1898), Albert Becker (Andante religioso, 1898), and Karl Goldmark (Cello
Sonata in F, 1892) seemed relatively faceless and conventional in comparison, however fine
they were as individual compositions. The Goldmark seemed to be an alternate version of
Brahms’ cello sonata in the same key (published in 1887). It is good in itself to become
acquainted with works by composers whom we read about and, in the case of Goldmark,
occasionally hear. There are enough attractions in that work to merit repeated hearings as an
alternative to the not very large established repertory for cello and piano. In the context of the
festival, however, its primary impact was to suffer by comparison with a powerful musical
personality determined to have his own voice heard. The performances of both the Goldmark
and Sibelius chamber works, by the way, involved a last-minute change of personnel: instead of
Jeremy Denk, the pianist was Daniel del Piro, who apparently (owing to conflicts in Denk’s
schedule) had to step in on only two days’ notice. The quintet alone is about a 35 minute work
with a massive piano part. That the performance was so authoritatively convincing says much
about the abilities of the pianist, along with his better-prepared colleagues.
Turning to the orchestral music of the first weekend, further invidious comparisons left
Sibelius’s colleague and friend Robert Kajanus in the obscure light where he has been
languishing despite his pivotal role in encouraging his younger colleague. Kajanus’s symphonic
poem Aino, based on the Kalevala, demonstrated that the use of native folklore is no guarantee
of original character, especially when heard next to Sibelius’s bewitching Lemminkäinen and the
Maidens of the Island (1895, rev. 1897, 1939). One wonders what the first version of this score
might have sounded like; the orchestral writing of what we heard was masterly and refined,
again breathing a uniquely Sibelian atmosphere apparently more advanced than that of his
later First Symphony (1899).
The weekend concluded with a program of Sibelius and Russian music, demonstrating
the utterly different worlds those contiguous countries’ musical cultures inhabited at the turn
of the century. Sibelius’s virtuosic piano pieces Kyllikki (1904) were further evidence that the
neglect of his non-symphonic output is unjustified. Particularly entertaining was Stravinsky’s
1963 arrangement of Sibelius’s Canzonetta (1911), originally for strings, but rescored for the
Stravinskian combination of clarinet, bass clarinet, four horns, harp, and double-bass. The
Russian professed little interest in the Finn for most of his life; here at the age of 81, he
performs the trick of turning one of Sibelius’s popular string pieces inside-out, basically
inhabiting it from within as he had done 41 years earlier with Pergolesi’s music in Pulchinella
(1922). The string-saturated, intensely romantic melody is transformed into a fascinating study
of incommensurate sonorities that magically cohere as a hard-edged musical object. One
suddenly imagines a liturgical ritual with tolling bells. It is perhaps only by such alchemical
metamorphosis that the Finnish romantic and Russian modern aesthetics could achieve a state
of fusion.
Aside from the familiar (and delightfully performed) Rachmaninoff Suite no. 2 (1901),
the Russian work of greatest interest was the String Quintet (with extra cello) in A major by
Aleksandr Glazunov (1891-92), Sibelius’s exact contemporary. Though not a member of the
“Mighty Handful,” its youthful composer here appears as a kind of prodigy, having mastered
and personalized the characteristic Russian idiom at the age of 26. This is a fully satisfying,
large-scale chamber work of high technical polish, formal balance, marked by a flowing lyricism
that may have been inspired by Borodin but that contains its own distinctive melos, one verging
on but avoiding sentimentality. The chamber writing inclined toward the orchestral side (the
extra weight of the second cello) and the flow of events was continual and compelling. This
idiom has a high entertainment value—it reaches out to the listener in a most generous way,
offering a kaleidoscope of experiences: folksiness, pizzicato playfulness, an elegant waltz,
seemingly endless melodic invention, and harmonic freshness and expressivity (with occasional
nods to Tristan). The polished performance (by Harumi Rhodes, Sharon Roffman, Marka
Gustavsson, Jonathan Spitz, and Robert Martin) kept things moving briskly along, but the
players might have indulged at times in a bit more edge and roughness. The performance was
as cultivated as Glazunov himself, even when the composer was trying to act like he wasn’t.
The second weekend moved things forward chronologically into more mature Sibelius
and the beginnings of his international influence. Howard Hanson, an American of Swedish
descent, presents us with a model of a Sibelian symphonic composer of the 20th century,
conservative and modern at the same time. His Pastorale, op. 38 (1949) for oboe, originally
accompanied by harp and strings, was presented in an eloquent, shapely performance by
Alexandra Knoll supported by pianist Anna Polonsky. Its lyrically angular line, beautifully suited
to the instrument, along with a dark, occasionally acerbic accompaniment, projected a dramatic
monologue that balanced elements of Sibelian gloom with American narrative restlessness, a
combination that would resurface with greater drama and complexity in Samuel Barber’s First
Symphony, op. 9 (1936) heard in the final program. Both of these Americans, resisting the more
radical stylistic trends of the day, found support for their tonal inclinations in the work of the
Finnish master. The crucial factor is that all three still managed to find new things to say within
their chosen idioms.
That same program (Friday night of August 19) contained a range of offerings from eyeopening
to plain bad. Kurt Atterberg’s Piano Quintet in C major op. 31bis (1928) caught
everyone’s attention. Atterberg was later excoriated for his collaboration and public whitewashing
of the Nazis; this is probably the reason he remains so little-known today. The music
tells its own story: this is a deeply original voice, tonal yet very unconventional, full of
surprises, shocks, humor, and unlike anyone else’s. Given the advance press, one wanted to
hate it, but ended up understanding why, in its alternate form as the composer’s Sixth
Symphony, it found itself being performed by Beecham and Toscanini in 1936 prior to the
composer’s fall from grace. The other Nazi collaborator on the program, Yrjö Kilpinen, supplied
the bad: two songs so steeped in nationalist ideology as to be devoid of artistic value. Here the
composer’s error was not the self-centered careerism of Atterberg, but the stupid acceptance
of an ideological nationalist agenda that stripped away all elements of artistry and
inventiveness. Between those extremes, we had a set of piano pieces by Amy Beach channeling
would-be scenes from Eskimo life, and finding that Edward MacDowell had already been there.
These works were without fault or distinction. They are not at the level of the composer’s best
work, which really does deserve to be heard more frequently.
Also not heard at its best was the first movement of Bruckner’s Third Symphony in
Mahler’s arrangement for piano four-hands. Included to mark the composer’s influence on
Sibelius (which seems almost too obvious to require illustration), the performance by the
estimable husband-and-wife team of Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky failed to rise to
symphonic grandeur: it was too pianistic and “nice.” The polish of the playing robbed the
music of its formal cohesion (the great pitfall of this work) by arriving at the silent moments as
if they were genuine pauses rather than high-voltage interruptions of a compelling onward flow
of narrative. Four-hand piano transcriptions of symphonic works really belong in a more
intimate space than the Sosnoff Theater (cap. 900+), where they can thunder impressively; they
were intended for home delectation. (A graduate-school colleague and I used to play Bruckner
on an upright piano in a practice room down the hall from the library when the rigors of
research demanded a break; the miniscule space was easy to overwhelm with climactic
thunder—still one of the more satisfying realizations of Bruckner in my experience.)
Saturday afternoon’s program “From the Nordic Folk” contained one of those delightful
surprises that irregularly shows up in Bard Festivals: the presence of a performer from the
margin of “classical” performance that borders on the folk world. In this case, it was
violinist/fiddler Piia Kleemola, a performer/scholar of Scandinavian music. In conjunction with
Orion Weiss’s dynamic performance of Sibelius’s Six Finnish Folk Songs (1902-03), Kleemola
presented the original folk-tunes for three of the pieces: Minun kultani (My Beloved is
Beautiful), Sydämestäni (I Love You Deeply), and Velisurmaaja (Fratricide). Her arresting
performances made use of a non-tempered folk-scale with “neutral” third and seventh steps, a
phenomenon that inspired Bartok (represented on this program by half of his Fifteen Hungarian
Peasant Songs [1914-1918] to include quarter-tones in some of his violin music). The shock of
this intonation was akin to having the walls of Olin Auditorium fall away to reveal some wild
and unfamiliar landscape, an effect which one could also attribute as an intention of Sibelius’s
“nature-oriented” aesthetic, but here accomplished by remarkably simple means. Bartok’s folkstudies
began the year after that of Sibelius’s piano pieces and became more serious under the
influence of Grieg in 1906—we don’t often think of this great modernist as being inspired by
that arch-romantic, but such categories always fail to account for realities on the ground.
Both the Bartok work and Percy Grainger’s La Scandinavie for cello and piano (1902,
performed skillfully by Sophie Shao and Pei-Yao Wang) sought out the rustic, uncultivated
atmosphere surrounding the supposedly authentic expressions of the people’s voices, whether
in Hungary, Sweden, or Norway; both paradoxically surrounded the “borrowed” melodies (to
use a term fashionable in the world of Ives studies) with artfully constructed harmonizations
intended to slant the musical experience away from the genteel world of art-music. In Bartok’s
case, the result was to introduce new harmonies and rough rhythms to render the melodies
both “picturesque” and in some way mysterious; similar intentions could be felt in Grainger’s
case, but his relatively conventional harmonic language imparted an element of nostalgia that
worked against the de-familiarization of both Sibelius’s and Bartok’s aesthetic. It may be that
Grainger’s strenuous advocacy for Grieg’s music in the English-speaking world gave the
Norwegian composer’s music a reputation for sentimentality and miniaturization that it does
not deserve, judging by what was heard at this festival. One wonders whether a similar bias
toward conservatism in the same quarters injured Sibelius’s reputation as much as it helped it.
A further surprise on this program came in the form of Szymanowski’s three Mazurkas (1924-
26) based on the folk music of the Tatra Mountains that inspired much of that composer’s later
music: this music fit the modernist paradigm even better than Bartok’s slightly earlier effort,
capturing a sense of the mythic and archaic with a post-romantic idiom that was free of clichés
and sentimentality.
The Saturday afternoon program, “Finnish Modern,” would merit an entire review of its
own, but the fatigued reader will be happy to know that this will not be attempted here.
Anchored by Sibelius’s great String Quartet, Voces intimae (1909-1910), a work that bears no
immediate connection to contiguous compositions in the composer’s oeuvre, the program
offered works by Finns of the next generation, all well-chosen examples of heterogenous
responses to “Finnishness”—the 1930 songs of Keevi Madetoja showing the most direct
influence of Sibelius; late-romanticism—Erkki Melartin’s gem-like String Trio of 1926-27); and
‘20’s modernism—Aarre Merikanto’s Schott Concerto, 1924. This last, a “Brandenburg”-like
chamber concerto for violin, clarinet, and horn accompanied by a string sextet, may have been
the most striking discovery of the entire festival, a counterpart to the Ernst Toch Quartet no. 11
that we were delighted by a year earlier. This is a work from the modernist mainstream, akin to
the Hindemith Kammermusik series, the large-scale chamber-works of Schoenberg and Berg,
and at the same time, stylistically unique. The presence of jazz influence is felt periodically,
along with elements of a modernist lyricism (cf. Hanson), comic hi-jinx (cf. Atterberg), a formal
technique of continual motivic metamorphosis (cf. Berg’s Chamber Concerto), and even a slow
movement of daring immobility (cf. Sibelius the modernist!). This is an important voice and a
significant 20th-century career that is awaiting exposure and exploration. And who better
qualified than Leon Botstein and his orchestra?
Saturday night and Sunday afternoon brought our attention fully back to Sibelius and his
chronological development. The juxtaposition of his forbidding Fourth Symphony (1911) with
Carl Nielsen’s ecstatic Third Symphony, Sinfonia espansiva (1910-11) could not have provided
greater contrast, or stronger demonstration of the varieties of originality that were blossoming
at this moment which was also witness to the births of Petroushka, Pierrot Lunaire, and Three
Places in New England. The Sibelius is perhaps the ne plus ultra of this composer’s personal
form of modernism, while the Nielsen joyfully merges classicism of form with romantic lyricism
and an original approach to harmony that uses a gentle modality to loosen up the formal
narrative. Sibelius’s crepuscular Nordic light became half of this program’s chiaroscuro, with
Nielsen supplying noon-day Mediterranean sun as the complement. Both works were fully
characterized in the committed renditions of Botstein and the ASO.
I will pass quickly over the Sunday chamber program, something made difficult by the
presence of Richard Strauss’s late Sonatina for sixteen winds subtitled “Aus der Werkstatt eines
Invaliden” (1943), also conducted by Botstein. This divertimento-like, three movement
Mozartean exercise in self-soothing, composed during the darkest days of the life of the
composer and of his “nation,” lingered like one unwilling to die, to the monstrous length of
three-quarters of an hour! Such distended romantic rhetoric had not been heard at Bard since
the 1999 performance of Florent Schmitt’s Piano Quintet during that year’s Debussy Festival.
Enough said.
Compensation was at hand shortly afterward in the final program. The indefatigable
musicians generously offered three major symphonies and a symphony-length symphonic
poem.
Barber and Vaughan-Williams displayed opposing directions in which Sibelius’s influence
could operate on the next generation. (Both composers directly acknowledged their debt to
him in testimonials.) Barber, like Hanson, developed a restless, dramatically charged narrative
in his compact, one-movement work whose muscularly contrapuntal form of symphonism
contrasted with Sibelius’s largely homophonic approach to texture. Barber’s powerful work
holds together convincingly, despite moments of youthfully over-the-top writing. Vaughan-
Williams’ Symphony no. 5 (1938-1943, rev. 1951) offered a polar contrast. Dedicated to Sibelius
“without permission,” Sibelius responded to it by writing in his diary that this work was “like a
caress from a summer world.” As with Sibelius, the English composer eschews formal
developmental strategies and contrapuntal dialectics, producing instead extended moments of
timeless homophonic contemplation linked to a pastoral vision of nature. If Vaughan-Williams’
Third Symphony had not already been so titled, this could well have been his Sinfonia pastorale.
Tellingly, both of these serene works were written during the darkest days of the two world
wars. Unlike the Strauss “sonatina,” they lie less open to the accusation of personal escapism,
and more directed toward penetrating to the core of a redemptive humanity. That this
symphony’s optimism seems somehow less ultimately convincing than Sibelius’s more complex
response to his own experience of the world speaks very much to our contemporary condition.
Sibelius’s twin swan-songs Symphony no. 7 (1924) and Tapiola (1926) offered another
form of chiaroscuro: the one-movement symphony this time radiated a distilled clarity of
utterance, a beautiful balance of rationally discernable metamorphosis and mysterious
wholeness, while the tone-poem brought to an epitome the dynamically static qualities of
Sibelius’s life’s work colored by a new darkness (quite distinct from that of the Fourth
Symphony) that located its drama fully outside the realm of the human and centered in a
mythologically-charged nature. This is uniquely forbidding music: it is hard to imagine any
compelling score, whether Le Sacre or Gruppen, that is less expressive of human experience,
and therefore potentially more terrifying, than this one. Even its redemptive final major chord,
which seems to linger forever, only serves as a reminder of how far we have journeyed in this
music away from our own lives. All the speculations about why Sibelius stopped composing,
aired in the panel discussion on the first day of the festival, could be silenced by this one work.