Tuesday 19 January 2016

EVENSONG. Jean Sibelius conducts "Andante Festivo" for String Orchestra | New Year...


I was casting about for some fresh music which might prove Hysteria's Nemesis and this floated to the surface. I would never play the radio in the car but mrs ishmael does, choosing Radio Three for Harris's comfort and diversion and he does seem to settle more quickly with some background music. I cannot operate the media stuff in the car, I haven't a fucking clue, and I don't care, if it was down to me the indulgence of in-car entertainment would be an imprisonable offence.
But the radio was on and I heard just a few bars of this, en route to the airport this morning, scribbled the title down on a tissue, found that the old banger aircraft had been cancelled again, came home and have been listening to different versions of it all day long.

This is the best, though, by miles. This scratchy recording is the only one extant of Sibelius conducting one of his  own compositions. It was his last public performance.
 On New Year's Eve 1939, early in the Hitler war, this was performed without audience for recording purposes only  and under his direction was played about a third slower than are most modern interpretations. I think the piece, originally a string quartet, was composed in 1922, but this was the first performance of his arrangement for string orchestra  with timpani. 

Hard to believe, now, with our free access to such vast amounts of  music but in the 1930s Sibelius was the most popular composer in the world.  All I know of his work is Finlandia and the Karelia Suite, heard, I think, at school, in performances by the visiting City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and later by the Berlin Philharmonic on those Deutsche Grammophon LPs but his works have been on the radio a lot, recently, and this is one of  a few which have just wiped the floor with me;  
melancholy, and then some, 
like God sobbing. 




Mr Hitler, though, according to David Bowie, was the world's first rock star and he didn't believe in God, more's the pity.

13 comments:

Bungalow Bill said...

Beautiful thank you.

Alphons said...

"An Dante" is supposed to mean "moderately slowly" I believe. The last time I encountered anything as slow as that was seventy years ago when I was out delivering milk with the farmer from the farm across the road. The horse just collapsed and died in the middle of the road.
It was a lovely chestnut and black Shire. We had a very entertaining hour or two clearing away a dead horse, fetching the other one, (a strawberry roan)and getting all the milk cans and churns etc swapped about.

SG said...

I recall this piece Mr I - but from whence I do not know. The poverty of my education in classical music and, indeed, education is classics / 'Greats' is a continuing source of irritation to me and something I regularly reprove myself for -  for it is surely something I could do something about in this age of MOOCs? Must be one one of the reasons I come here. Sibelius draws out the melancholic in me too Mr I, for he lurks only just beneath the surface... As for 'God', isn't he a 'DJ' or something?

call me ishmael said...

That's why I come here, too, mr sg. I also felt that I knew this but then figured that if I had ever heard it I would never have forgotten it and that most probably its familiarity stems from bits of it being plundered by cinema composers, it is sweeping, majestic and poignant without being uneven and complicated, perfectly cinematic.

I don't think any of us exclusively shares Melancholy's special kinship. I watched a doc about Alex Higgins the other night, The People's Champion, and cried throughout, tears of rage, tears of grief; see it, if you haven't.

As for auto-didacticism, shit, man, like, don't start me talkin'.

call me ishmael said...

At least you weren't flogging it, m alphons, the dead horse.

There are faster versions of this composition on youtube but this is what the NewPeople would call the Director's Cut.

mongoose said...

Slowly? I think it might have stopped.

call me ishmael said...

That's engineers, born with a soul by-pass.

Anonymous said...

Like you Mr Ishmael, I was listening to Radio Three the other morning and heard the piece. It sounded familiar, and I thought it might be by Vaughan Williams or maybe Elgar, and only discovered it was Sibelius when I looked on the R3 web site, after which I found the recording by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. It's a lovely piece of music I think and somehow very moving.

Thanks for your piece on David Bowie. On and on the papers go about him. Thanks also for all your writing in the last year and best to you, Mrs Ishamel and Harris for the new one.

call me ishmael said...

Thank you, mr anonymous, they are a corruption beyond Death's corruption, the 'papers, There was a performance by the Mahti, I think, Symphony Orchestra, faster and flashier than Sibelius' own but well filmed and an interesting comparison, also, if one is not classically musical the directorial emphases can be illuminating.

Best wishes for a safe 2016.

SG said...

The image accompanying it evokes Verne's Nautilus as it submerges for the last time entombing its Captain or maybe one of the great battleships moored upon the sea-floor just off your own Island Mr I?

call me ishmael said...

It's a strange business, mr sg, usually I prefer to see the band as well as hear the song; sometimes, as with this, it's the opposite, no moving pictures and even the recording is poor by today's standards, but it doesn't matter. I see what you mean, about the image, and there is awe-full feeling to the sound. He listened to the radio a lot, Sibelius, generally to hear his own pieces but also to influence future writing, a fore-runner of Glenn Gould, perhaps, and Marshal McLuhan, identifying the medium as being the true message; Jimi Hendrix seeing the Marshall amp as instrument.

SG said...

I agree Mr I, there is a sense of dread and forboding in it, underneath God's tears. Something worse than the Devil maybe... I got the same feel off of Ennio Morricone's score for the 'Hateful Eight' which I got off my arse to see the other day.

SG said...

Sorry, linky for the relevant score for aforementioned film:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-3vP799NtvA&ebc=ANyPxKpylTDPf318MUvRnoEtvxhJue6BN-DHcbCG75KWzHXvVJGKrD2UZ1A9tn1h2cbBtNnmwRFk

If anyone can be arsed to do the copy and paste.