A Nordic Musical Banquet

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
The Swan of Tuonela, Op. 22, No. 2 (1895)

Most Recent Oregon Symphony Performance: James DePreist led the Oregon Symphony on September 8-10, 1985, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 

Instrumentation: English horn, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trombones, timpani, bass drum, harp, and strings 

Estimated Duration: 10 minutes

Tuonela, the land of death, the Hell of Finnish mythology, is surrounded by a large river with black waters and a rapid current, on which the Swan of Tuonela floats majestically, singing. 

The quote is from the Kalevala, an epic that both underpins Finnish mythology and informs many of Sibelius’ evocative tone poems. Not only is The Swan of Tuonela the best known of the Four Legends from the Kalevala, but it ranks amongst Sibelius’ most richly realized orchestral compositions, a dark-hued, mournful tapestry in which a solo English horn (representing the swan) enters into dialogue with solo cello and viola over somber strings. Even if a brief ray of sunlight (harp) breaks through the murk, it’s not long before the forlorn darkness returns and the swan swims off into the fog.

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907)
Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 (1868)

Most Recent Oregon Symphony Performance: Leo Hussain led pianist André Watts and the Oregon Symphony on December 1-4, 2017, at Smith Auditorium at Willamette University and the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 

Instrumentation: solo piano with two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings 

Estimated Duration: 30 minutes

Among Felix Mendelssohn’s many achievements, none had a more lasting impact than his 1843 founding of the Leipzig Conservatory, still vital in its modern incarnation as the University of Music and Theater Leipzig. The list of early Leipzig graduates reads like a who’s who of the next musical generation: composers Arthur Sullivan, Leoš Janáček, Frederick Delius, and Isaac Albéniz; pianists Ferruccio Busoni and Wilhelm Backhaus; conductors Adrian Boult and Felix Weingartner. Between its celebrated faculty and soon-to-be celebrated students, that elegant beige building on the Grassistraße was – and is – a musical treasure box.

Which is not to say that every single one of those students was deliriously happy to be there. Fifteen-year-old Edvard Grieg hated the place. Admitted as a piano student, he was placed with Louis Plaidy, a rigid pedant who drilled him remorselessly on those infamous soul-shriveling exercises by Czerny and Clementi. Grieg eventually escaped his pianistic purgatory and entered the much more convivial studio of Ernst Ferdinand Wenzel, a colleague and friend of both Mendelssohn and Schumann. Wenzel instilled in Grieg a fascination with Schumann’s keyboard music—an interest that was to bear rich fruit. 

Grieg graduated from Leipzig in 1862 with a few recitals, some early compositions, and a life-threatening attack of pleurisy behind him, not to mention having heard Clara Schumann play her late husband’s Piano Concerto in A Minor at a Gewandhaus concert. After spending some time in Copenhagen, where he started making a name for himself as a rising young composer-pianist, Grieg returned to Norway and set up shop in the capital city Christiania (now Oslo). His activities on behalf of a nationalist Norwegian music now began in earnest; he became conductor of the Philharmonic Society, founded the Norwegian Academy of Music, and began writing works of a distinctly Norwegian character such as the Lyric Pieces, Op. 12. 

In 1868, while on vacation in Denmark, the 25-year-old Grieg composed his Piano Concerto in A Minor, still his most popular composition and the work that established his international reputation. Its resonance with the Schumann piano concerto is clear and unaffected. The two concertos share not only the same key, but also their openings as the pianist cascades down the keyboard after an initial orchestral statement – one chord in Schumann, a timpani roll in Grieg. Both works follow up with an understated melody in the winds. So much for the similarities. What really matters is the vigor of Grieg’s own voice, as yet still evolving but unmistakably his own.  

Consider that understated melody in the winds. Schumann’s theme is distinctly classical in shape and demeanor, downright Mendelssohnian in its sophisticated balance between rise and fall, stepwise motion and leaps. Grieg’s, on the other hand, is an altogether rougher-hewn affair that kicks off with a matched pair of folkish phrases before sailing off into an effusive continuation that wafts upwards for more than an octave before fluttering back down. Not only are the two concertos stylistically distinct, but the Grieg is far more virtuosic in its piano writing – a reflection on its creator’s youthful barn-burning piano chops, as opposed to Schumann’s custom tailoring for wife Clara’s gracious pianistic demeanor and pronounced distaste for Lisztian fireworks. (Franz Liszt himself read through the Grieg concerto, pronounced it as worthy, and suggested a few improvements to the orchestration.) 

Whatever the Schumann influences in the first movement, the second-place Adagio is vintage, full-strength Grieg. As much an expanded art song as it is a concerto movement, filled with noble melancholy, it leads directly into a high-spirited and dramatic finale characterized by urgent folk rhythms and heroic gestures. That finale, incidentally, foreshadows a structural element that was to become common in future concertos by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff: the lyrical secondary theme erupts near the end to create a thrilling climactic statement and a noble ending. 

The A Minor Concerto put Grieg on the map of musical Europe and has never lost its honored place on piano-concerto Olympus. True to its exalted status, just two years after Grieg’s death in 1907, it became the very first concerto (and orchestral work) to be recorded, in a severely abridged but nonetheless engaging performance by fellow Leipzig grad Wilhelm Backhaus.

Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871–1927)
Symphony No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 34 (1911–15)

Most Recent Oregon Symphony Performance: First Oregon Symphony Performance 

Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings 

Estimated Duration: 46 minutes

In the late 19th century, Scandinavian music came to be associated with certain ‘national’ composers who were deemed as public bearers of their country’s cultural heritage in music. Norway’s musical emissary Edvard Grieg will be forever associated with the folk music and landscapes of his native land. Denmark boasts the urbane and emotionally complex Carl Nielsen, while Jean Sibelius was even paid a handsome yearly stipend by the Finnish government after its independence from Russia. 

But there is no Swedish equivalent. That seems odd given Sweden’s deeply rooted musical culture, among the most evolved in Europe. Scholars have identified the country’s political and cultural eminence as the reason; it simply didn’t need a musical ambassador. So while Sweden has produced a rich harvest of superlative composers – consider Joseph Martin Kraus, Franz Berwald, Allan Petersson, and Hugo Alfvén – none have been elected as icons of Swedish musical identity, and none were all that inclined towards folk-inspired elements save the occasional jeu d’esprit such as Alfvén’s Swedish Rhapsody No. 1, a.k.a. Midsommervarka. 

The exemplary Wilhelm Stenhammar provides a splendid case in point. Born into the ferment of the late Romantic era and educated in both Sweden and Germany, his musical outlook was largely influenced by Wagner and Bruckner. It was only after encountering Sibelius’ second symphony that he was moved to adopt a more overtly Nordic style on the model of his Finnish colleague. That said, even at his most ‘nationalist’ Stenhammar remained a cosmopolitan late Romantic whose music is far more distinguished by its superb craftsmanship and broad emotional range than by any ethnic or folk qualities. 

He was easily the most accomplished Swedish pianist of his generation, so naturally his catalog contains a substantial amount of first-rate piano music. (Which doesn’t get played enough.) His idiomatic string music results from his close association with Sweden’s Aulin Quartet, with whom he toured extensively and for whom he wrote a series of fine string quartets. (Those don’t get played enough, either.) 

Stenhammar was also a virtuoso conductor who played a critical role in establishing the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra as an anchor of Swedish musical life. His orchestral catalog is surprisingly small, but it’s choice, with Symphony No. 2 in G Minor as his sole completed and approved symphony. Stenhammar, dissatisfied with his technical skill, subjected himself to an intensive four-year study of classical counterpoint, and those studies make themselves felt throughout what is considered to be the outstanding Swedish symphony of its era. 

The very opening is probably the most folk-like passage in the entire work. A rustic melody – it might even be a Swedish folk song – is stated in unison and gradually evolves a sophisticated harmonic texture. The secondary theme that follows is rhapsodic and lyrical, making excellent use of the wind instruments. This is probably the best place to mention that Stenhammar’s orchestration mirrors Brahms in its studious avoidance of the slightest hint of orchestral bling. No tinkling bells or crashing cymbals here; just strings, winds, brass, and timpani, all employed with care, taste, and scrupulous regard to orchestral balance. 

The reserved emotions of the second-place Andante suit the overall demeanor of a solemn processional, while the third movement brings a welcome dose of cheer to the proceedings. This Scherzo is distinctly folk-inspired, soaked in pulsating dance rhythms that savor of waltzes or polskas – the Swedish triple-meter version of a polka. 

It is in the finale that Stenhammar’s study of counterpoint pays off in a stunning double fugue – i.e., a fugue (musical follow-the-leader) that manipulates two main melodies, whereas everyday fugues make do with one. But this is no dry academic exercise; in fact, Stenhammar even indicates one particularly climatic passage as passionato, which he described as “a heart’s song brimming over.”