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BBC Proms on the World Service: BBC Proms 2015: Second Symphony by Jean Sibelius

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Second Symphony by Jean Sibelius

05/09/2015 GMT

BBC Proms 2015

BBC World Service - BBC Proms on the World Service, BBC Proms 2015, Second Symphony by Jean Sibelius

Thomas Dausgaard conducts BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2

Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Finland’s greatest composer with his most popular symphony conducted by a leading Scandinavian conductor of today.

Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D major 
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Thomas Dausgaard (conductor)

Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Finland’s greatest composer with his most popular symphony conducted by a leading Scandinavian conductor of today.
BBC’s Samira Ahmed is joined by Pauliina Stahlberg, director of the Finnish Institute in London.

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 43 (1902)

A 19th century Finnish romantic who lived into the jet age, Sibelius is credited with helping to build the very concept of Finnish national identity through his music. 

The Second Symphony was conceived in the turbulent years at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries when Finnish national identity was being forged.  It is not clear that the composer had an expressly nationalistic agenda here: the work was partly conceived during a stay in Italy and the episodic second movement is thought to have originated in sketches intended for a composition inspired by the Don Juan story.

PIcture credit: Chris Christodoulou

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