Best of the year: Oleg Sobolev advises an album of classical music
2015 is coming to an end. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the year turned out to be saturated, including culturally. To dot the “and” and make sure that nothing important had passed by, we asked experts in various fields to tell about the brightest books, films, albums and other cultural events. In the second issue, the music critic and connoisseur of classical music, Oleg Sobolev, explains why it is impossible not to miss the box-set of compositions by Jan Sibelius, which can be presented to friends - but it’s better to keep it.
Oleg Sobolev
Musical critic
This year there have been many good recordings of new music, There were many good recordings of old and unnoticed music, but I don’t feel like talking about them personally. As for me, 2015 was primarily a year in which the 150th anniversary of the birth of Dane Carl Nielsen and Finn Jan Sibelius was celebrated - and it was to the music of two Scandinavians that I addressed most often. In October, Warner Classics released a 7-disc box set with rare archival recordings of Sibelius music from the period 1928 through the 40s.
A bald gentleman with a cigar on the cover of a box set actually wrote a lot of music, but the compilers of the publication limited themselves to the standard minimum, which is enough for an ordinary person for the eyes: all seven Sibelius symphonies, a violin concerto, a dozen symphonic poems, separate music for theatrical productions and a few chamber things. This may not be the best interpretation of the heritage of Sibelius (although the seventh symphony is better than the version of the Boston symphony under Sergey Kusevitsky, included in the box set, I do not know), but they are perfectly restored and are amazingly well listened to for so long-recorded music. And most importantly - this is a good reason to rehearse Sibelius or even get acquainted with his music for the first time.
Sibelius, to put it bluntly, is generally accepted to criticize rather than praise. During his lifetime, he was almost universally considered the best symphonist from the time of Beethoven - after World War II, they both accused him of being retrograde and excessive sentimentality, and continue to be blamed until now. Even a superficial listening of his seven symphonies, however, would say the opposite. Sibelius symphonic music, of course, grows from German (Bruckner) and Russian (Tchaikovsky) Romanticism, but at the same time it went forward from its sources for light years and at the same time failed to adapt to the realities of modernism - which is why it sounds absolutely timeless. And even more so in it there is nothing sentimental.
Judging by the biographical notes and excerpts from his diaries, Sibelius, in his best years of composing, maneuvered between a deep alcoholic depression and an inexplicable enthusiastic delirium from traveling through the nature of Finland - for example, the story is known as a theme for the end of his fifth symphony inspired by a flying wedge cranes. But better than any diaries about this reports his music. His fifth, sixth and seventh symphonies - his best things in about all respects - are deeply introspective and do not look at the outside world at all. They are immediately followed by deep tragic sadness, and equally deep hope for the best - see, for example, the finale of the fifth symphony, the first part of the sixth or the whole seventh symphony. If 2015 was to give any assessment, then, as for me, it was another difficult year of enduring disasters and tragedies - and Sibelius’s music in this context reminds us very much that you should not despair. Dawn will come for every night, spring will come for every winter, cranes will fly south, but they will definitely return.
The photo: Archive of Oleg Sobolev