Pristine Classical Recorded Music

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Sibelius - Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63

The Symphony No. 4 in A minor, opus 63, by Jean Sibelius, is one of seven symphonies that he composed. Written between 1910 and 1911, it was premiered in Helsinki on 3 April 1911 by the Philharmonia Society, with Sibelius conducting.

The work comprises four movements:

I. Tempo molto moderato, quasi adagio

II. Allegro molto vivace

III. Il tempo largo

IV. Allegro

For this work Sibelius reversed the traditional Classical positions of the second and third movements, placing the slow movement as the third. He also begins the piece with a slow movement instead of the traditional fast opening movement.

The interval of the tritone dominates the melodic and harmonic material of the piece, but in a completely different way from how it dominates the Third Symphony. It is stated immediately, in a dark phrase for cellos, double basses and bassoons, rising C-D-F♯-E over a hard unison C. Most of the themes of the symphony involve the tritone; in the finale, much the harmonic tension arises from a collision between the keys of A minor and E flat major, a tritone apart. The bitonal clash between A and E♭ in the finale's recapitulation leads to tonal chaos in the coda, in which the rival notes C, A, E♭ and F♯ (that is, the interlocking tritone pairs C-F♯, A-E♭) each strive for ascendancy in a series of grinding dissonances with many clashes between major and minor thirds. The glockenspiel pathetically attempts to hail the momentary establishment of A major; but in the end it is the insistence of C natural (the note with which the work so strikingly began) that forces the movement and the symphony to close in a desolate A minor, bereft of melody and rhythm.

Many commentators have heard in the symphony evidence of struggle or despair. Harold Truscott writes, "This work ... is full of a foreboding which is probably the unconscious result of ... the sensing of an atmosphere which was to explode in 1914 into a world war." Sibelius also had recently endured terrors in his personal life: in 1908, in Berlin, he had a cancerous tumour removed from his throat. Timothy Day writes that "the operation was successful, but he lived for many years in constant fear of the tumour recurring, and from 1908 to 1913 the shadow of death lay over his life." Other critics have heard bleakness in the work: one early Finnish critic dubbed the work the Barkbröd symphony, referring to the famine in the previous century during which starving Scandinavians had had to eat the bark of trees to survive.

In the year before beginning the symphony, he had met many of his contemporaries in central Europe, including Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and others; his encounter with their music provoked a crisis in his own compositional life. He said in a letter to his friend (and biographer) Rosa Newmarch about the symphony: "It stands as a protest against present-day music. It has absolutely nothing of the circus about it." Later, when asked about the symphony, he quoted August Strindberg: "Det är synd om människorna" (Being human is misery).

The first recording was made by Leopold Stokowski with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1932.