Saturday 24 November 2007, 7.30pm
PRE-CONCERT EVENT AT 6.30PM

SIBELIUS: THE ORIGIN OF FIRE
Sibelius Night Ride and Sunrise     16'     HALLÉ FIRST | BRITISH
Sibelius Orchestral Songs     10'
Sibelius Luonnotar     10'
Sibelius Symphony No.7 in C     21'
Sibelius Tapiola     18' 

Mark Elder conductor • Hillevi Martinpelto soprano

The Hallé's Sibelius cycle arrives finally at the composer's Seventh and last symphony, an immense single movement that seems to carry the pulse of nature in its continuous development and drive. But this is not the end - 'the silence speaks'. Tapiola is a tone poem of magical force; Sibelius's last orchestral work portrays the terrifying spirit lying behind the stark Finnish pine-forests around his isolated home outside Järvenpää. In the first half of the concert, a performance of the rousing tone poem Night Ride and Sunrise remembers yet another work brought to this country by the Hallé in a 1931 UK premiere. Hillevi Martinpelto brings her luminous soprano voice to Luonnotar, the 'Spirit of Nature' in a remote landscape.