A Sibelius evening with Simon Rattle and Leonidas Kavakos

After his first two symphonies, Sibelius left the safe ground of the traditional four-part symphony structure. With the Third he created a three-movement composition that in no way forgoes dance-like diction, despite leaving out a Scherzo. As in the two preceding works, the music heads strictly towards the finale, which Sibelius at a Moscow guest performance in 1907 described as “crystallization of thought from chaos”: a hymnal melody line ascends from a musical “primal state”; its almost ceaseless intensification is enhanced by the brass in the background.

With the Fourth Symphony, in contrast, Sibelius avowedly uttered his “protest against present-day music” and responded to the “circus” of gigantic orchestration with a comparatively neo-classical work, transparent in a way characteristic of chamber music that leads to an internalised expression: “This is my most spiritual work.” The evening is rounded off by Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, which is unmistakably indebted to the Romantic tradition with its virtuosity and joie de vivre. The soloist of the evening is Leonidas Kavakos, the Philharmoniker’s Artist in Residence in 2013/14 and one of the most acclaimed violinists of our time. He has a particularly close relationship to the Sibelius concerto – indeed, he won the International Sibelius Competition in Helsinki in 1985 with the work when he was just 18.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Sir Simon Rattle

Leonidas Kavakos