Jean Sibelius was barely three years old. when his father died. The child’s terrible loss was, at least partly, compensated by the presence of a loving and caring uncle, Pehr Sibelius. He would become Jean’s mentor, friend, model and inspiration, and some of Sibelius’ most important life choices were certainly influenced by his uncle’s personality and advice.
Pehr was a businessman, but had manifold interests which he pursued in his free time. He loved to play the violin (frequently at impossible hours, such as 2am!), and being an amateur astronomer. The Finnish sky certainly provides many interesting stimuli for stargazers, provided – that is – that one is unafraid of the cold. Jean was no less enthused than his uncle when it came to stars, but perhaps he was slightly less convinced by the conditions in which such observations took place. As an adult, the composer would frequently recall the “beastly cold” (his words) excursions during a Christmas holiday, when uncle and nephew went out by night to observe the meteors. Still, in spite of the literally Polar atmosphere of Northern nights in the midst of winter, those visual impressions would leave their mark on the artist who would become the musical icon of his country. Sibelius went on to recall how his uncle’s passion could have become Jean’s own job: speaking of Pehr, he said that “Astronomy was his dominating passion and he would have preferred both me and my younger brother to devote ourselves to that science. However, he raised no objection when I went in for music”.
If Pehr was a nightbird, who enjoyed the long Norther nights for both astronomical and musical activities, Sibelius was possibly less keen on playing the violin in the heart of night; however, his interest in the violin (as well as in the stars, as we will shortly see) was perhaps determined in turn by Pehr’s love for that instrument.
Actually, Sibelius’ first steps in the world of music did not take place on the violin’s fingerboard, but rather on the piano’s keyboard. Aged five, he liked to explore the piano’s sounds and to find chords by pressing the instrument’s keys. Certainly, for a small boy eager to experiment with sounds, the piano was more intuitive and immediate an instrument than the violin.
Still, possibly due to his uncle, or possibly independent of him, Sibelius would grow to love the violin much more than the piano. Only in Fall 1881 did the child begin to receive regular violin courses, under the guide of Gustaf Levander, a bandmaster, even though it is more than likely that he had experimented with that instrument at an earlier date. However, the start of his official violin studies coincided with, and probably determined, the blossoming of the boy’s love for music. As he wrote himself, speaking to his biographer Karl Ekman, “Music grasped me with a power that rapidly relegated all my other interests to the background. That was when I began to study the violin in earnest”.
When he reached the age of twenty, uncle Pehr presented him with a good violin, possibly a Stainer, which remained among Sibelius’ most cherished possessions for his entire life. In several letters, Jean, then a music student, asked his uncle for violin strings. He loved that instrument intensely, and would have wished to become a violin virtuoso. In his own words, “The violin took possession of me. During the ten years that followed it was my dearest wish, the loftiest goal of my ambition, to become a great violin virtuoso”. At the Helsinki Academy, Sibelius played the violin in quartet and in orchestra, at times performing also as a soloist. His technique was certainly good, as is testified by the repertoire he played, including two movements from Mendelssohn’s magnificent Violin Concerto, performed at a students’ concert. In spite of this, what Sibelius liked most, in the violin, was the musical freedom it afforded. Freedom from musical constraints, which allowed him to improvise for long stretches of time; freedom even from physical limitations, as he loved to take his violin with him when strolling in the gorgeous Finnish nature; he would stop by rivers, lakes, or in the forests, and play the violin framed by the beauty of the surrounding landscape.
Sibelius’ ambitions as a violin virtuoso were sadly to be frustrated. Sibelius was a relative latecomer in the world of professional musicianship; his fortune was that he lived in a peripheral area of Europe, where competition was not as high as in other countries. However, when Ferruccio Busoni, who was his junior by a few months, arrived in Helsinki as an invited Professor of Piano (and this happened at a time when Sibelius was still a student), he was quick to realize that the international standards of virtuosity were by then unattainable by him. Nevertheless, he did compete (but unsuccessfully) for a job as a violin player in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1891; and for some years after that he cooperated occasionally with the Helsinki Philharmonic Society Orchestra, conducted by Robert Kajanus, who was Sibelius’ longtime friend and a convinced apostle of his music. He also kept playing with his siblings: Linda was a pianist and Christian a cellist, and therefore rewarding chamber music could be played without going out from the family house. They also performed publicly, and this possibility of having his chamber music works performed as soon as ink was dry on the page certainly encouraged Sibelius to conceive and compose chamber music.
Even though Sibelius’ activity as a violinist tended to diminish in time, the violin remained his favourite instrument; only for the piano did he write more works than he left for the violin, and certainly some of his finest pieces are found in the violin repertoire.
Between 1884 and 1889, Sibelius wrote two Sonatas and two Suites for violin and piano; indeed, they are the most important chamber music works he composed in his youthful years. The Sonata in A minor is really among the first fruits of his artistic vein. Written in 1884, it is Sibelius’ major work for violin and piano. With its classical structure, it does not display characters or traits of extreme originality, but this would be asking for too much of a composer who had only recently accepted the challenges of the complex Sonata form. An unexpected element, to be sure, is found in the tonal organization of the movements, which is decidedly unconventional.
Another attempt to craft a Sonata for violin and piano dates from the following year (1885), when the composer created an imposing and solemn movement in D major which he likely intended to be as the opening movement of a complex and demanding work; however, as far as we know no attempts were made to create or even draft the remaining movements.
A different perspective is needed when evaluating and discussing the F-major Sonata, which follows the preceding one by five years. In spite of the youthful energy of the piece, and of some compositional traits which reveal what Sibelius had still to learn as a composer, it is a fully-fledged piece, worthy of a place in the international concert repertoire. Sibelius’ deep knowledge of the performing techniques of both the piano and the violin explains the work’s complex writing and the technical challenges it poses to both performers.
One of this Sonata’s most intriguing traits, however, is its hidden programme: a very detailed itinerary, which Sibelius carefully and precisely described to his uncle Pehr. In Sibelius’ words (the letter is dated July 6th, 1889), “The 1st movement in 2/4 F major is vigorous and daring, and also sombre, with some splendid episodes; the 2nd movement in A minor is Finnish and melancholy; in it a true Finnish girl is weeping in the A string; next a few country boys perform a Finnish dance and try to coax the girl to smile, but she keeps singing with even more feeling and wistfulness than before; the 3rd movement 3/8 in F major is fresh and spirited and dreamy. People are out on a meadow, celebrating Midsummer Eve, singing and playing. Then a shooting star falls among them. They are surprised but continue with their games, but they cannot play as freely as before, since everybody has become more serious. Finally the atmosphere becomes gloomy and grand (the shooting star!) and also their playing becomes joyful”.
Curiously, such a momentous event as a meteor’s fall does not appear prominently in Sibelius’ music; probably, this programme should be intended more as a spiritual suggestion rather than as a step-by-step description. The third movement, where this event takes place, appears to render it musically simply as a slowing down of the beat in the central section, but this is unproved and speculative.
Interestingly, and perhaps meaningfully (even though there may be simple explanations for this), Sibelius imagined this observation of the shooting stars taking place at the time when most amateur photographers are looking for them, i.e. in midsummer; certainly not in the equally fascinating but (his words) “beastly cold” winter.
Musically, the influence of Edvard Grieg is clearly discernible, but the same can be said of the young composer’s landmark tendency to employ folk tunes from the Finnish tradition: it is still an unsystematic practice at this stage of his compositional activity, but it is clearly recognizable as an anticipation of his later works. This Sonata was premiered by the composer on July 16th, at a charity concert in Lovisa, and just before the beginning of his studies in Berlin.
This CD’s programme is completed by a much later work, the Sonatina op. 80. As he wrote in his diary, on Christmas Day 1914, “a planned ‘Sonata I for violin and piano’… Perhaps! The idea has been with me for a long time – since the 1880s, when I wrote two such pieces”. And indeed more than a hint of nostalgia for his youth and the dreams of glory he had had at that time are found in this mature piece: “‘Dreamed that I was twelve years old and a virtuoso. My childhood sky is full of stars – so many stars”. Once more, the violin is bound for him to the regrets for a failed performing career, but also, and much more positively, to the fascination for the stars, as had been expressed also in the F-major Sonata (and alluding once again to Uncle Pehr’s interest in both the stars and the violin).
Different from his earlier works, however, this piece shows a more objective and detached Sibelius, who, by then, was in full control of the compositional material, and who could handle it less directly and emotionally. Even though these emotions are less subjective than they used to be, however, they are by no means less pronounced, and the full palette of the composer’s expressive resources is put on display with this splendid work.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2023
Jean Sibelius: Complete Violin Sonatas
