It was once observed that Jean Sibelius’ symphonies can be taken out of the concert hall and played in their natural habitat—the outdoors, the land of the midnight sun. The music glorifies that habitat with sounds that transform nature into a magnificent aural perspective in a series of sweeping crescendos that immediately arrests the ear of the listener.
This is especially true of his second symphony. One senses the craggy landscape of ominous fjords with bursts of sunlight struggling to survive amid a hostile landscape. Glistening trombones, seductive clarinets, startling brass and horn ensembles sweep across an icy, snow-glistened landscape. Horns and woodwinds proclaim the forbidding landscape in the opening movement but the patriotic subtext is always pride of place. The second symphony, composed in 1902 shortly after the huge success of the first, quickly established Sibelius as a prominent Finnish national treasure.
Some reviewers speak of abrupt changes in tempo, but the work is never disjointed. Each movement augurs the impending sonority of magnificent but unyielding tragedy. The work takes no prisoners and the breathtaking finale concludes with a poignant heaven-storming chorale—a plea for peace and redemption.
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra under conductor Anu Tali performs Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 along with works by Carl Nielsen and Edvard Grieg Feb. 20-21 at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts’ Uihlein Hall, 929 N. Water St. For tickets visit mso.org.
