Sibelius Festival 2022: Première 1911
Sibelius Festival 2022: Première 1911
Lahti Symphony Orchestra
Dalia Stasevska, conductor
In memoriam
Canzonetta
The Dryad
Night Ride and Sunrise
Symphony No. 4
6 pm Pre-concert Talk / Carpenters’ Hall
Timo Virtanen: Concerts Reconstructed
The programmes for the orchestral concerts on Friday 2 September and Saturday 3 September were originally chosen by Jean Sibelius himself. ‘In Sibelius’s time, it was typical that the première of the new work took place in a concert organized by the composer himself. This allowed composers to present their other works as well. Sibelius was especially careful to ensure that his premières took place at concerts where the repertoire consisted exclusively of his own compositions’, explains Dalia Stasevska.
The Fourth Symphony takes us to a world inhabited by dark chords and to the border with atonality. Its introverted expressionism left audiences of the period bewildered. It is a close-knit, focused work but also one that reveals wide-ranging inner visions – one of Sibelius’s finest symphonies.
According to Sibelius himself, Night Ride and Sunrise depicts ‘the inner experiences of an average man riding solitary through the forest gloom; sometimes glad to be alone with Nature; occasionally awe-stricken by the stillness or the strange sounds which break it…’ Finally, the landscape is illuminated by the sun.
Duration: Approx. 2 hours, includes intermission.