Video interview with Sir Colin Davis on the power and darkness of Nielsen and Sibelius
08 LSO Season 09/10
The power
of darkness:
Sibelius and Nielsen
Sibelius and Nielsen have certain universal
things in common. Both are obsessive: Nielsen
is obsessive, almost relentless, with certain
figures, and you could say that Sibelius’s
relentless pedal points have something
in common with that. I haven’t been close to
Nielsen’s music until now, but in looking for
new repertory for the Orchestra I have spent
time with the Fourth and Fifth symphonies
and found it increasingly fascinating. There’s
such a destructive force in this man and he lets
it loose in the most surprising ways. Because
the forms that Nielsen chooses seem to develop
out of themselves, you could say that is also
the case in Sibelius’s music. But Nielsen’s
is a much more discrepant and wilder way
of going on. We are faced with the problem
of making a consecutive narrative out of
it and not just painting a nice picture and
then slashing it to pieces. There has to be
something which is going to lead us through
all this and I don’t know what it is yet!
It’s true of every composer, but Sibelius’s
sound is unique. It is pitched rather low, unlike
Mediterranean music which is higher up,
so you suspect that in the darkness of his
symphonies, things may be lying hidden. It has
enormous emotional power, and that’s what
really grasps people. All his symphonies are
very different from one another. As he got
older the music became more compressed
– the Seventh is only 22 minutes but it feels
like a lifetime. So you are involved with the
development of a very complex man when
you are dealing with his music.
The energy in these pieces is astounding.
And there is a continual threat to order –
take the Seventh Symphony where his
great trombone theme is subject to the most
inordinate onslaught. What does it mean?
Well, a noble tune like that in C major must
stand for human idealism, and the suffering
that the idealism has to go through in order
to match up with reality. There’s a mystery
about the first movement of the Fifth
Symphony; it has all kinds of eerie spirits lying
around in it. I once went to Finland in the
height of summer and I stayed in a woodland
cabin, and what with the insects and the heat
and the light and the birch trees and a couple
of vodkas, you could imagine anything would
come out of that forest.
Sir Colin Davis conducts
1 & 4 Oct 09 Nielsen Symphony No 5
8 Oct 09 Sibelius Symphony No 5
6 & 9 May 10 Nielsen Symphony No 4
(‘Inextinguishable’)
Kristjan Järvi conducts
1 Nov 09 Sibelius Lemminkäinen Suite
John Adams conducts
7 Mar 10 Sibelius Symphony No 6
Robin Ticciati conducts
25 Mar 10 Sibelius Symphony No 7
Listen to Sibelius Symphony No 5
Listen to Sibelius Symphony No 6
Listen to Sibelius Symphony No 7
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