{"id":188,"date":"2006-11-02T22:51:23","date_gmt":"2006-11-02T22:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2006\/11\/02\/ormandy-on-sibelius\/"},"modified":"2011-06-19T15:09:45","modified_gmt":"2011-06-19T14:09:45","slug":"ormandy-on-sibelius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2006\/11\/02\/ormandy-on-sibelius\/","title":{"rendered":"Ormandy on Sibelius"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eugene Ormandy talks about Sibelius<\/span><\/p>\n

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Meeting Sibelius for the first time, I had the impression of being in the presence of someone almost superhuman.\u00a0 Here was a being I had admired and looked up to all my life — and suddenly I was in his presence.\u00a0 He was a towering man, a towering personality, with a magnificent head and powerful face.\u00a0 His beautiful home was full of records, many of which we had sent him from <\/span>America<\/span> throughout the years.\u00a0 Goddard Lieberson sent him many recordings from Columbia Records.\u00a0 I remember that I once sent him a recording taken off the air of his Lemmink\u00e4inen suite, which we later recorded for <\/span>Columbia<\/span>.\u00a0 He didn’t want it to be performed; that was one of the works he had a strong aversion to, and he wanted to keep the score from the public.\u00a0 But I managed to get a copy from <\/span>Helsinki<\/span>, studied it thoroughly, liked it and performed it.\u00a0 Then I sent a special recording to Sibelius.\u00a0 I understand that he put it away for weeks before listening to it.\u00a0 He was afraid because he was such an uncompromising critic of his own work.\u00a0 But when he heard it he was pleased and sent me a cable followed by a kind and enthusiastic letter.\u00a0 When we recorded the work officially, I sent him several copies and he was really touched.\u00a0 I like to think that I was instrumental in getting Sibelius to appreciate one of his own works! <\/span><\/p>\n

Sibelius’ First Symphony was the “first” for me in another sense — it was the first of the master’s symphonies I ever conducted.\u00a0 This was in 1932, with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra — and we recorded it for RCA Victor in that year.\u00a0 I think perhaps it was the first Sibelius symphony to be recorded outside of <\/span>Scandinavia<\/span>.\u00a0 Of course the great Finnish conductor, Sibelius’ friend Kajanus, had broken ground for Sibelius years before, and so had Koussevitzky, Stokowski and Beecham.\u00a0 I have played the First Symphony many times in the intervening thirty years, and it never loses its fascination for me.\u00a0 Recordings have changed a great deal since 1932, and so have interpretations of his works to the end, and he always had admiration for the work of my colleagues Stokowski and Koussevitzky.\u00a0 I will risk immodesty to add that he praised my readings too.\u00a0 His enthusiasm is a source of great pride to me. <\/span><\/p>\n

Strangely enough, Sibelius has never been popular in the Germanic countries — excepting, of course, <\/span>Scandinavia<\/span>. <\/span>Germany<\/span> and <\/span>Austria<\/span> never took him to their hearts the way the British and we did.\u00a0 And yet he studied in <\/span>Germany<\/span> and the German masters influenced his musical development — I remember a dozen years ago when the State Department asked me to conduct some concerts in <\/span>Berlin<\/span> with the RIAS Orchestra.\u00a0 I programmed the Sibelius Second Symphony and it didn’t take me much more than one measure to realize that the orchestra had never seen it before.\u00a0 When we had played it through, the very Germanic concertmaster said to me, “This isn’t such a bad work after all,” and left it at that.\u00a0 The work seemed to make even less of an impression on the critics — one of them began his review with the question, “Why Sibelius?”\u00a0 Fortunately, there are still a few conductors around whose answer to that question would be, “Because Sibelius is among the giants.” <\/span><\/p>\n

It is difficult for me to choose a favorite among the seven symphonies of Sibelius.\u00a0 The first is still under the influence of Tchaikovsky, but it is a healthy thing for a first symphony to recall the past, and Sibelius does so gloriously.\u00a0 The Second Symphony shows the composer struggling heroically to free himself from this influence, but not fully succeeding; the very tensions created by this struggle give the work its power.\u00a0 Like the First, it is filled with passages that only Sibelius could have conceived.\u00a0 The Third I don’t understand, frankly.\u00a0 The Third and Sixth remain enigmas, as far as I am concerned.\u00a0 The Fourth I love, the Fifth I love and the Seventh — all of them free, wild, beautiful things, more like elemental forms of nature than consciously shaped works of art.\u00a0 And I wish I could say that I love the Eighth, too, but alas, like everyone else I have never heard it and don’t know if it exists or ever existed. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Eighth Symphony is a mysterious subject.\u00a0 Everytime I saw Sibelius — and I saw him four or five times, perhaps more — in his home about twenty-seven miles away from the city of Helsinki, I asked him about it, sometimes very tactfully, sometimes quite directly.\u00a0 And his response was always the same:\u00a0 he became very upset and nervous and quickly changed the subject.\u00a0 He seemed to be disturbed that anyone should bring up the subject of the Eighth Symphony.\u00a0 His son-in-law, Jussi Jalas, a very fine conductor and a good friend of mine, had told me that he was convinced that there was an Eighth Symphony.\u00a0 On the other hand, Sibelius’ oldest daughter assured me that there was no such symphony.\u00a0 If there was one, he destroyed it.\u00a0 Sibelius is reputed to have said to intimate friends, “If I cannot write a better symphony than my Seventh, then it shall be my last.”\u00a0 Apparently he was not satisfied — if he wrote an Eighth Symphony — with what he had done.\u00a0 At any rate, he seems to have enjoyed the mystery surrounding the existence of the work. <\/span><\/p>\n

Naturally, I always told him that if and when his Eighth Symphony was ready for performance I hoped he would give me the opportunity to give it its world premiere.\u00a0 There was never any response:\u00a0 his fine, nervous hands would begin to tremble even more and he would look away with a troubled expression.\u00a0 Out of my admiration and respect I would never press the matter, although I felt puzzled and disappointed.\u00a0 Twice I went to his house with Olin Downes, who was one of his greatest admirers and had written a book about him.\u00a0 Mr. Downes promised me that he would bring up the subject, because I told him I didn’t dare to anymore.\u00a0 But he got the same reply, or rather non-reply:\u00a0 a strange twist in Sibelius’ face, a nervous intensity in his eyes, and the trembling hands.\u00a0 I said in an aside to Mr. Downes, “We’d better drop the subject.”\u00a0 We did.\u00a0 It shall always remain a tantalizing mystery for me. <\/span><\/p>\n

As wonderful as it was to meet Sibelius for the first time, it was even more wonderful to have been able to introduce him, some years later, to the members of The Philadelphia Orchestra.\u00a0 That occurred in June 1955, and there is a rather touching story connected with the meeting.\u00a0 For some months previous I had been in correspondence with Dr. Ringbom, the director of the Helsinki Philharmonic, in order to arrange for the orchestra to meet the master while we were in <\/span>Finland<\/span> on tour.\u00a0 Sibelius was very ill at the time, very old and fragile and tormented by ear trouble.\u00a0 The day we were to go to his secluded villa at J\u00e4rvenp\u00e4\u00e4 arrived, and though it was cold and raw and raining, the men were as excited and eager as children.\u00a0 And I was as excited as any of them.\u00a0 Imagine my disappointment when Dr. Ringbom called to confess that when he had written to me in <\/span>Philadelphia<\/span> to say that everything was arranged he had not mentioned that Sibelius himself knew nothing about the projected visit.\u00a0 He had only spoken to Mrs. Sibelius, who had agreed at the time but now flatly said no, her husband was too ill to receive us. <\/span><\/p>\n

There we were, in <\/span>Helsinki<\/span>, thousands of miles from home and within twenty-seven miles of Sibelius.\u00a0 “Dr. Ringbom,” I said, “you must not disappoint us.\u00a0 Please call up Mrs. Sibelius and explain to her that this orchestra, from the very earliest days with Stokowski, has done as much to spread Sibelius’ fame as any orchestra in the world.\u00a0 All they ask in return is to see him.”\u00a0 It worked. <\/span><\/p>\n

My wife and I were havingh tea with him, and the orchestra came in two buses.\u00a0 Even then he hadn’t been told that they were coming.\u00a0 He was so sensitive — perhaps the most sensitive, shy man I ever met in my life — that the knowledge that he was to meet 110 musicians would probably have incapacitated him if he were given\u00a0 too much time to think about it.\u00a0 And those poor colleagues of mine were standing out in the cold rain with thin raincoats on, waiting!\u00a0 Finally I took the bull by the horns and said, “Mr. Sibelius, do you know that the entire Philadelphia Orchestra, the orchestra that played your music when nobody else did, is waiting outside, hoping to meet you?\u00a0 Would you just go out on the balcony and say hello to them?” <\/span><\/p>\n

“But I cannot speak English well enough,” he protested.\u00a0 “They will not understand me.” <\/span><\/p>\n

“Speak German, they’ll understand you.\u00a0 Just look at them, don’t say anything.” <\/span><\/p>\n

And so he got his heavy winter coat and hat — there are pictures of that visit — and came out with me.\u00a0 “Gentlemen,” I said, “Mr. Sibelius needs no introduction.”\u00a0 They applauded him and bravoed him until I had to tell them, “Gentlemen, Mr. Sibelius is not well, but he wanted to come out and say a few words to you.”\u00a0 And then he told them, with the beautiful simplicity of his few English words, how grateful he was to them for playing his music so nobly.\u00a0 At last his oldest daughter pulled him back, saying, “Daddy you’re going to catch cold.”\u00a0 Fortunately, he didn’t catch cold, but we were worried that he might, for it was bitter that day. <\/span><\/p>\n

He died two years later, in 1957.\u00a0 And I think today we perform his music better for the memory of those few minutes when he came out on his porch and spoke to us.\u00a0 It was an experience that none of us will ever forget.
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– Essay from Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 in E-Minor, Op. 39.\u00a0 The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor.\u00a0 Columbia Masterworks MS-6395.<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

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