dedicated to

At the time of stylistic revolutions that Music lived in Europe in the early decades of the last century, the Finnish Master seems reach out to Composers, even younger colleagues, who are not leaving the moorings of a symphonic dimension - more, of a late romanticism discursivity, renewed, even painful, still winning... - antithesis of the modernism “tout court” and of the innovative extraordinary results indicated by the Viennese School, by Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Bartok ... That was the 20th century highest musical season!

Sibelius, though apparently indifferent to Elgar, though ousted from the relentless Theodore Adorno and maliciously dismissed by the independent Benjamin Britten, although afar from the ranks of composers (already followers and imitators!) who join to new "isms" ..., Sibelius precisely remains a reference, as a symbol and guide on one side, as respected Personality on the other; however cumbersome for his authority to maintain a substantial presence on the side of a symphonism far from languishing. A strong creative thinking, aware and forward-looking outcome not at all nostalgic, innovative in the urgency of a "modernity" of thought that only since a few decades is finally being focused. Sibelius too "is" the 20th century! In the sense of renewal that was less brisk and stimulating than that of Debussy, Ravel, Schönberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Berg ..., a renewal as one of the possible responses to Mahler implosion, extreme catharsis of distress also inherited from the last Ciaikowskij. Sibelius firmly believes in the symphonic expression. He prevents the dissolution decreed by the magnificence of Mahler disintegration .... and re-oxygenates. A very personal vision, certainly heroic as sealed by most, but also "optimistic". The Symphony is still severity of form, logical connection between the various thematic elements, confident aspiration to cyclical concepts; thus a purposeful container functional to his positive creativity.“If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music”. Sibelius is the skillful craftsman to whom bind composers who do not feel the urgency to cut with the past, nor to share Mahler absolutism: "The symphony must be like the world - he said - It must be all-embracing ..." (the famous often-quoted sentence that the Bohemian composer turned to the Finnish).

A restless Arnold Bax found in the Sibelian “aura” the dimension of that discursivity he could not give up. His Fifth Symphony is even "embarrassing" for the listener, as it manifests itself Bax total admiration for the great Finnish. The first movement is an authentic act of faith, built on a five-note phrase that refers to a theme of Sibelius Fourth Symphony, later found - with a descending line of gentle lyricism - in the Fifth, with which Sibelius returns to an epic solarity. Bax tribute is suffered. It's a total confession that strays and astonishes for the crystalline assertion. He was moved to tears by listening for the first time Tapiola, the work he believed would have placed Sibelius among the immortals. In his successive Sixth Symphony Bax quotes Tapiola towards the end of the work, with a theme of the Strings that illuminates a moment of furious excitement of the underlying horns. The composer's Sibelian dimension is touching, for an author who still feels that he can not ignore Shostacovich and others..., who is attracted in other directions. Telling about some of his works (the Fifth Symphony and The poem that the Pine-Trees Knew) he described them as "craggy northern works”. Indeed, they are. The spirit of Sibelius is in evidence.