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Akseli Gallen-Kalle­la’s paint­ing Sym­po­sium made in 1894. Sym­pho­ny #1 was com­plet­ed in 1899. From left: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Oskar Merikan­to, Robert Kajanus and Jean Sibelius. They were a clique of young bon vivants in Helsin­ki. Sibelius had already devel­oped his trade­mark scowl. Kajanus would con­duct the symphony.

Jean Sibelius’s Sym­pho­ny No. 1 in E minor, Opus 39 was writ­ten in 1898, and first per­formed the next year. Sibelius was aged 33, but he had been com­pos­ing seri­ous­ly for less than ten years. The sev­en sym­phonies con­sti­tute a cor­pus of work that begins with the con­ven­tion­al sym­phon­ic form and grad­u­al­ly evolves into an entire­ly dif­fer­ent approach. Stand­ing at the begin­ning of this process, the First is essen­tial­ly con­ven­tion­al in form. Its resem­blance to Tchaikovsky’s sym­phonies is so obvi­ous that most lis­ten­ers will spot it instant­ly, but it also dis­plays many of Sibelius’ dis­tinc­tive man­ner­isms. The first move­ment begins with a long clar­inet solo over a tim­pani roll, and you can’t get any more Sibelian than that. The finale, as always with Sibelius, is a nose-thumb at the con­ven­tions of the time. While it is a Late Roman­tic piece, with the emo­tion­al the­atri­cal­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with that era, con­duc­tors tend to exag­ger­ate its con­for­mi­ty to the tem­plate by ignor­ing Sibelius’ clear­ly marked tem­pi, and play­ing the first move­ment in a “grander” style than he intend­ed. In mod­ern record­ings, only Osmo Vän­skä seems to con­duct it as indi­cat­ed. Either way, it is not a mere begin­ner’s work. It can hold its own with most of the reper­toire of major sym­phonies reg­u­lar­ly per­formed in con­cert halls. Despite being far away from the arcane splen­dours of the lat­er sym­phonies, I still find pas­sages from it pass­ing through my head at idle moments. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t have a copy of the Vän­skä ver­sion. I reg­u­lar­ly play the Col­in Davis one. But of spe­cial inter­est, and avail­able on CD, is the first record­ing ever made, that of Sibelius’ inti­mate friend Robert Kajanus, made in 1930 with the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny. This is an amaz­ing per­for­mance, essen­tial to every seri­ous Sibelian, but it would not sat­is­fy today’s audio­philes. It’s a dig­i­tal trans­fer from 78rpm shel­lac discs and cylin­der record­ings. This prob­a­bly rep­re­sents the com­posers inten­tions more than any oth­er record­ing. Lean­er, mean­er, much sharp­er and less grandiose.