Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Symphony No. 5 in E flat major Op. 82

Sibelius wrote his Fifth Symphony for a concert that took place in Helsinki on December 8th, 1915, his fiftieth anniversary. Exactly a year later, he conducted a new version of his work in Turku. And still he was not satisfied. He worked on a third in the harsh years of the war. It premiered in Helsinki on November 24th, 1919. Recently, the first version of Symphony No. 5 has also returned to the repertoire.
This work belongs to the last period of Sibelius's oeuvre. His attitude towards Finnish mythology and nature was no longer defined by Kalevala with its story and heroes. This place was now occupied by his own concepts of the “soul” of phenomena and objects, the symbols of which filled his symphonies and his poems. During his work on Symphony No. 5, Sibelius gathered most of the material for his later pieces, He also created an outline of a form where the course of music moved in ever-narrowing circles around the central idea.
∙ Traces of the previous versions can still be seen in the final one. The first movement is a combination of two from an earlier draft. It begins with a two-theme sonata allegro with two different expositions (tempo molto moderato) and a development with climaxes of both themes in a reversed order (Largamente). The three phases constitute the above-mentioned circles that come closer and closer to the essence of the themes. The recapitulation is replaced by a scherzando based on existing motives (previously Movement Two; Allegro moderato), that lead through a fugato and a return of the epilogue of the exposition to a great coda (Presto) derived from the first theme. The themes are so apparent that this complicated form seems entirely natural.
∙ Movement Two (Andante mosso, quasi allegretto) is a variety of a variation. Its theme, introduced pizzicato, comes in various variants over undying and highly dissonant ritardando in winds. It has features of Finnish folk music (defined by Sibelius himself in 1896). The mild colour darkens towards the end in a dramatic episode.
∙ The structure of Movement Three consists in a gradual approach of the scherzando segment (Allegro molto) and a hymnic invocation, which takes place as a great ostinato of brass (Misterioso). It is Sibelius’s symbol of a swan’s flight, present in various forms in the whole art of the North. In the last fragment of the piece (Largamente), the ostinato’s powerful current seems to flow towards unavoidable doom, only to turn, with the greatest tension, towards a triumphant finale.

Maciej Negrey