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Cast
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Hannu Lintu — Conductor
Program notes
Finnish maestro Hannu Lintu presents and conducts the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in all seven bold and unique symphonies by their celebrated compatriot Jean Sibelius!
Sibelius's final, genre-breaking, sublimely idiosyncratic final symphony was born in troubled waters. Confronted by his wife Aino about his alcoholism, suffering from depression and artistic uncertainty, Sibelius confessed in his diary: “Alcohol, which I gave up, is now my most faithful companion. And the most understanding! Everything and everyone else have largely failed me…"
Written in a single uninterrupted movement, Sibelius's Seventh is a masterpiece of form and unity, deploying bold themes and motifs in C major and C minor, then ingeniously varying tempo and instrumentation to make them transform, combine, and clash. The end result condenses an entire symphonic universe into the least traditional—and the most delightfully unclassifiable—of his seven symphonies. It is a fearlessly audacious statement of Sibelius's identity: a Finnish composer whose gifts always transcended the boundaries of nations.
