Ida Haendel (violin)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, Paul Beard)
Conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
Sibelius Concert
Violin Concerto in D minor Symphony No. 5, in E flat
From the Royal Albert Hall , London Sibelius is one of the most original minds in twentieth-century music. His originality lies not in the invention of a new vocabulary, but in the new use he makes of the old, and in his individual approach to problems of symphonic construction and design as shown in his later symphonies and tone poems.
Sibelius' Symphony No. 1 (1899) and Symphony No. 2 (1902) and Violin Concerto (1903, revised in 1905) show their romantic inheritance as well as their composer's strong personal idiom. The Violin Concerto is a typical nineteenth-century romantic concerto. In short, it is a first-class show-piece for the violin, full of expressive, lyrical tunes and passages of bravura all set in a colourful and imposing orchestral texture.
The first movement is grand and impassioned in style; the slow movement, which is based on a long, singing melody, is deeply appealing in its emotional warmth; the finale exploits dance rhythms of a striking and vigorous character.
Among the dozen or so violin, concertos that have survived the vagdries of the concert world Sibelius' Concerto deserves a high place for its sincerity of feeling and brilliance of execution.
From his Symphony No. 3 (1907) onwards
Sibelius created for himself a distinctive and highly original symphonic style, which is remarkable for its economy of notes, conciseness of expression, and organic cohesion of structure. Sibelius' last five symphonies do not make easy listening for those who are not prepared to concentrate. Symphony No. 5 is perhaps the most accessible and is comparatively simple, straightforward, and. genial.
It certainly cost the composer a considerable amount of thought and labour. He began to think about the material and shape of the work in the autumn of 1914, he completed the actual composition in 1915, he revised it in 1916, and then, finally in 1919 largely re-wrote it.
There are three movements, of which the first consists of a subtle fusion of a freely constructed first movement and a scherzo. The opening horn theme is an important generator of other ideas and is also used as a kind of binding agent. The slow movement is virtually a set of simple variations superimposed on the recurring rhythmic phrase first heard pizzicato on violas and cellos. The powerful finale opens with a moto perpetuo theme which is kept going for some time until strings and horns introduce an important bell-like theme that is made to dominate the rest of the movement. Ralph Hill