26 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

NOTESON THE PROGRAMBy James M. Keller, Program AnnotatorThe Leni and Peter May Chair

Asked to use the words “Sibelius” and “vio-lin” together in a sentence, most music

lovers would automatically add the word “con-certo” to the mix. It’s inevitable, really; JeanSibelius’s D-minor Violin Concerto towers as anicy summit in the instrument’s literature. ButSibelius and the violin are connected in otherways, too. He aspired to become a violin virtu-oso himself, but unfortunately fixed on thatgoal too late for it to be feasible. When he em-barked on violin lessons he was 14 years old.By that age many virtuosos-in-training are al-ready seasoned players, and the provincial in-struction available to Sibelius, combined withhis tendency toward stage fright, limited hisprogress. Still, he became accomplishedenough to play in the Vienna Conservatory’s orchestra when he was a student there, in1890–91, and he even auditioned (unsuccess-fully) for a chair in the Vienna Philharmonic.

Sibelius enriched his instrument’s repertoirewith quite a few works apart from this concerto.He worked on a second violin concerto in 1915but abandoned it far from completion, recyclinghis sketches into his Sixth Symphony. He com-posed numerous works for violin and piano, in-cluding a Sonata (1889) and a Sonatina (Op. 80,1915), as well as many items grouped into col-lections of short movements. Sibelius wouldcomplete his final composition in 1927 and inhis final three decades limited his musical cre-ativity to tinkering with extant pieces and mak-ing stabs at works that would never come tofruition. Shortly before he gave up composing,Sibelius was engaged one last time with the vi-olin, though the Suite for Violin and Orchestrahe projected would remain a fragmented draft.

None of these works rivals the Violin Concertoin combining Sibelius’s unique musical lan-guage with the capabilities of the solo instru-ment. This, in effect, was the central challengeconfronting the composer. Already in suchworks as his first two symphonies and his Lem-minkäinen tone poems he had defined his dark,sober sound, and these were not characteristicsthat would easily be melded with the more ex-troverted, even flashy tradition that surroundedmost violin concertos of the 19th century.Sibelius was not naturally drawn toward

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op. 47

Jean Sibelius

IN SHORT

Born: December 8, 1865, in Tavastehus(Hämeenlinna), Finland

Died: September 20, 1957, in Järvenpää

Work composed: September 1902–early1904; revised,1905

World premiere: February 8, 1904, in Helsinki,with the composer conducting the HelsingforsPhilharmonic, Victor Novácek, soloist

New York Philharmonic premiere: November 30, 1906, Wassily Safonoff, conductor, Maud Powell, soloist

Most recent New York Philharmonic performance: February 28, 2015, SakariOramo, conductor, Frank Peter Zimmermann,soloist

Estimated duration: ca. 32 minutes

03-17 Kavakos.qxp_Layout 1 3/4/16 2:53 PM Page 26

MARCH 2016 | 27

composing concertos at all, and this wouldprove to be the only one, for any instrument,that he would see through to completion. Still, aconcerto needed to have a certain degree offlashiness or else a soloist could hardly be ex-pected to perform it. Sibelius solved this prob-lem by creating what some historians haveviewed as a deepening of the tradition.

The section of a traditional concerto most atodds with Sibelius’s predilection for profunditywould be the first-movement cadenza, in whichsoloists are given the greatest opportunities todemonstrate their technical prowess. Sibeliusmeets the challenge head-on: he provides asolo cadenza but instead of presenting it as asort of pendant to the proceedings he gives itimmense structural importance, moving it tothe middle of the movement and essentiallymaking it fill the role of a development section.(A second cadenza, playing a more traditionalfunction, originally stood at the end of themovement, but Sibelius eliminated it when

he tightened the concerto in his 1905 revision.)Also non-traditional is the lack of real dialoguein this concerto, the sort of back and forth conversation between soloist and orchestrathat listeners are more accustomed to hearingin the concertos of, say, Mozart, Beethoven,Mendelssohn, and Brahms.

The vast breadth of the opening movement ismirrored in the still beauty of the slow move-ment, melancholy in a way that perhaps recallsTchaikovsky. Although this concerto is not aprime example of Sibelius’s occasional penchantfor folk inspiration, the finale does seem to be adance of some sort. The musical commentatorDonald Francis Tovey called it “a polonaise forpolar bears,” a description so perfect that fewprogram annotators can resist quoting it.

Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, twoclarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trum-pets, three trombones, timpani, and strings, inaddition to the solo violin.

Views and Reviews

Donald Francis Tovey’s “polar bear” comment is his most famous utterance on Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, butelsewhere in his essay on the piece, he observes:

In the easier and looser concerto forms invented byMendelssohn and Schumann I have not met with a moreoriginal, a more masterly, and a more exhilarating workthan the Sibelius Violin Concerto. As with all Sibelius’smore important works, its outlines are huge and simple;and if a timely glance at an atlas had not reminded methat Finland is mostly flat and water-logged with lakes, Ishould doubtless have said that ‘his forms are hewn outof the rocks of his native and Nordic mountains.’ The com-poser to whose style the word ‘lapidary’ (lapidarisch) wasfirst applied by the orthodoxy of the [eighteen] ’nineties isBruckner; and if the best work of Sibelius suggests any-thing else in music, it suggests a Bruckner gifted with aneasy mastery and the spirit of a Polar explorer. … The realproblems of musical form are always, in the last resort,problems of movement; and Sibelius has his own specialsense of movement, which delivers him from the need ofBruckner’s desperate and dangerous gesture of ‘I pausefor a reply.’ It gives him complete command of the arts ofrousing expectation and of slow gradation to a climax.

The young Sibelius, with violin

03-17 Kavakos.qxp_Layout 1 3/4/16 2:53 PM Page 27