Program Notes: Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Violin Concerto in D, Op. 47 
 

“When I was about fifteen years old, music took such hold of me that it soon drove all other interests from my mind… For the next ten years my dearest wish, my proudest ambition was to be a great violin virtuoso.” -Sibelius 
 

Young Jean Sibelius’ musical gifts quickly outgrew his small hometown of Tavastehus, Finland, and he soon moved on to study in the capital Helsinki.  But neither his piano nor his violin studies ever reached virtuoso status because he never had the patience for diligent finger exercises.  He started violin too late (age 15) was too easily distracted by improvisation.  He had the heart of a composer and starting at age 25 he devoted himself to composition.  European nationalism was at its peak as Sibelius reached his compositional maturity.   Norway had Grieg, Denmark had Nielsen, the Czech Republic had Dvorak, and Sibelius became Finland’s musical hero. 
 

Aside from music, Sibelius had a preoccupation with nature throughout his life. As a child he was known to wander off into the wilderness; as a young man, study of plant life and animals rivaled his study of music; and as an old man, after a great career in music, he spent the last 30 years of his life in compositional silence at his forest cabin, Ainola. 
 

Sibelius’ love of nature is intimately felt in his music.  His forms are organically connected, his orchestrations solid like Scandinavian timber, and his harmonic and textural colors like frozen winters or thawing fjords.  The opening of the violin concerto is a good example of this.  Over frigid tremolo in the high string, the solo line comes in like an arctic wind, barren and painfully icy.  Yet deeper within that theme lies a sweet warmth—that of a cozy cabin, where a crackling fireplace and wool blankets protect from the cold.  But after this genius Sibelian theme, the concerto digresses, and turns into a standard example of a free Romantic violin concerto—yet still in classical form—in the spirit of Schumann or Mendelssohn, with virtuosic difficulty in the spirit of Vieuxtemps or Wieniawaski.  It is the most popular violin concerto of the 20^th century, although it really belongs in the 19^th. After a failed 1903 premiere, Sibelius revised the concerto, and in 1904 it received a much better performance with Richard Strauss conducting, and Karel Halir on the violin.  The concerto was then forgotten for a few years, until Heifetz discovered it in the 1930’s, and it soon became standard violin repertoire.