{"id":7720,"date":"2011-01-01T00:43:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T05:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=7720"},"modified":"2018-08-05T02:44:26","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T06:44:26","slug":"image-of-the-month-jean-sibelius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=7720","title":{"rendered":"Image of the month: Jean Sibelius"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"11-01-01<\/a><\/p>\n

Jean Sibelius has remained my favourite com\u00adpos\u00ader through\u00adout my life. Some\u00adthing in his work touch\u00ades me direct\u00adly. One of my great\u00adest plea\u00adsures was to attend the unique con\u00adcert series in which all his sym\u00adphonies were per\u00adformed (for the first time) in sequence, under the direc\u00adtion of the young and bril\u00adliant con\u00adduc\u00adtor Thomas Daus\u00adgaard. When I told him, dur\u00ading the post-per\u00adfor\u00admance recep\u00adtion, that it was the best per\u00adfor\u00admance of the 4th sym\u00adpho\u00adny (my favourite) I had ever heard, he replied that it was his favourite as well.. giv\u00ading much the same rea\u00adsons I would have. It is the most dif\u00adfi\u00adcult, and per\u00adhaps the least played of the sev\u00aden sym\u00adphonies.\u2026 dark, ambigu\u00adous, com\u00adplex, and intriguing.<\/p>\n

This pho\u00adto\u00adgraph is by Jousuf Karsh, the Cana\u00addi\u00adan por\u00adtrait pho\u00adtog\u00adra\u00adph\u00ader who made icon\u00adic images of Win\u00adston Churchill, Ernest Hem\u00adming\u00adway, and many oth\u00aders. Karsh remem\u00adbered details of the sitting:<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>I arrived at Sibelius\u2019s home \u2018Ain\u00ado\u00adla,\u2019 named for his wife Aino, laden with gifts from his admir\u00aders \u2014 an inscribed man\u00adu\u00adscript from com\u00adpos\u00ader Ralph Vaugh\u00adan Williams, a warm let\u00adter from Olin Downes, the cel\u00ade\u00adbrat\u00aded music crit\u00adic of the New York Times, a box of his favorite cig\u00adars and a bot\u00adtle of old cognac from the Cana\u00addi\u00adan High Com\u00admis\u00adsion\u00ader in Lon\u00addon. This last we shared with lit\u00adtle Finnish cook\u00adies and cof\u00adfee. His daugh\u00adter inter\u00adpret\u00aded for the straight-backed patri\u00adarch of eighty-four, although there was such a meet\u00ading of minds that words became scarce\u00adly nec\u00ades\u00adsary. The struc\u00adture of his face remind\u00aded me of carved gran\u00adite, yet with infi\u00adnite warmth and human\u00adi\u00adty. This pho\u00adto\u00adgraph was one of the last tak\u00aden. He was vis\u00adi\u00adbly moved as I told him how the Finnish work\u00aders, in their north\u00adern Cana\u00addi\u00adan log\u00adging camps<\/a><\/span>, dou\u00adbled their wartime out\u00adput when his Fin\u00adlan\u00addia was played for them.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

The links go to relat\u00aded arti\u00adcles on this blog. Some others:<\/p>\n

The Kale\u00advala<\/span><\/a>, is the Finnish epic that inspired much of Sibelius\u2019 music. A youth\u00adful work of his, Kuller\u00advo Op.7<\/span><\/a>, is a choral-orches\u00adtral telling of part of the epic. I also dis\u00adcuss it here<\/span><\/a>. En Saga, Op.9<\/span><\/a> is anoth\u00ader. I have also writ\u00adten blog items about his string quar\u00adtets<\/span><\/a>, and his first sym\u00adpho\u00adny<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean Sibelius has remained my favourite com\u00adpos\u00ader through\u00adout my life. Some\u00adthing in his work touch\u00ades me direct\u00adly. One of my great\u00adest plea\u00adsures was to attend the unique con\u00adcert series in which all his sym\u00adphonies were per\u00adformed (for the first time) in sequence, \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,927,947,929],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-blog","category-ap-blog-2011","category-c-listening","category-cp-listening-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7722,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions\/7722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}