The Festival’s culmination starts with The Oceanides, a tone poem depicting the daughters of Neptune luring sailors to their doom. Its ending, Sir Mark says, ‘is terrifying, a huge tsunami welling up through the orchestra.’ Sibelius felt that ‘Nature has…
Continuing the exploration of Sibelius’s symphonies, the Fourth and Fifth are worlds apart in mood; the Fourth, composed in the wake of illness and personal problems, is a brooding, dark masterwork of uncompromising beauty. Henning Kraggerud returns to play the…
Sibelius found in the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, a rich source of inspiration for his tone poems, as in Pohjola’s Daughter, where the tale of how the hero Väinämöinen fails to win the love of a stony-hearted maiden is…
Sir Mark considers Sibelius a singularly important composer for British music-lovers. His music is embedded in the Hallé’s history with Barbirolli, Beecham, Harty and Richter all advocates; Sibelius himself conducted the orchestra in 1931. In the Hallé’s and Sir Mark’s…
This inspirational concert, perfect for winter, celebrates the patriotic music written by three Scandinavian composers. Two of the most famous pieces by Norwegian Edvard Grieg feature: his musical tableaux for the quintessentially Scandinavian play, Peer Gynt; and his stunning Piano…
