Music and Vinyl: Sibelius

Jean Sibelius's final published symphony was given it's premiere in Stockholm in 1924 as Fantasica Sinfonica No.1, but by the time of the published score a year later the composer had promoted it to his 7th Symphony.

Jean Sibelius

A one-movement symphony, it shows the mastery of Sibelius in shifting tempos around with a sleight of hand making such changes either imperceptible or organic in nature. Much has been written about this music. The Royal Stockholm Symphony Orchestra considers it "the world's most perfect symphony. A magical shimmer imbues this phenomenal piece of music, and it's majestically beautiful and jubilant melodies have made it one of his most beloved".

Conductor Simon Rattle has described its closing bars as "almost like a scream. It’s the most depressed C major in all of musical literature. There’s no other piece that ends in C major where you feel it’s the end of the world. Look at how carefully he orchestrates is so that it doesn’t sound like a victory, but as something you reach on the edge of death. You finally reach C major – and it’s over. It should be a struggle for the strings to achieve this last note with their last bit of energy”.

Lorin Maazel

Finnish musiclogist Veijo Murtomäki has said "The seventh symphony (…) is something new and revolutionary in the history of the symphony (…) With the seventh symphony and Tapiola the era of major-minor tonality inevitably came to an end - but how magnificently!"

Apart from commentary given in the links above, Wikipedia's page on the symphony has many musical examples, and you can read the scan of the record sleeve note below.

This recording, with Lorin Maazel conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, dates from 1966.