Navigating Finland's Cultural Landscape through Music |Perspective

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] come with us on a musical journey through some of the most magnificent places on earth great towns and cities of europe steeped in history and beauty and resounding with the stories and music of the world's great composers [Music] just some of the greats in our classical destinations welcome as we invite you to join us on a musical and scenic journey to some of europe's most beautiful places we'll be following in the footsteps of the great classical composers exploring their worlds and rediscovering their music here we're at the house of jean sibelius our featured composer and the very place where he composed some of his most inspired music but first let's travel just a short distance to a rather famous landmark nikki vasilakis will again join us here in helsinki the capital of finland helsinki is a magical blend of art and nature a wonderful city to explore and of course is the music of finland's greatest composer jean sibelius [Music] finland has a population of 5.2 million 20 of whom live in the helsinki metropolitan area nearly 80 percent of finland is either water or forest our journey will go from helsinki then flying north to rovaniemi the capital of lapland before we return to just north of helsinki and the town the home and museum of composer john sibelius this is the hotel camp quite a renowned institution in helsinki completed in 1887 the hotel camp has a great many stories to tell and jean sibelius was responsible for quite a few of them [Music] over the past hundred years or so the fates of the hotel camp and finland have been closely knit together the restaurants of the hotel have provided a beautiful setting for fabulous parties the identity of the emerging finnish nation was blueprinted at the camp important political issues have been decided and significant deals closed at its tables the camp has a varied history at one point in the middle of the last century it was doubtful that the old place would survive but survive it has and under the present owners has been faithfully and painstakingly restored to many of its original specifications but certainly the most significant person who stayed here and he stayed here frequently and he drank here frequently was jean sibelius johan julius christian sibelius was born in hemendine about 100 kilometers north of helsinki on december the 8th 1865 his dissolute alcoholic father died when he was two leaving the rest of the family himself his elder sister and young pregnant mother maria carlotta with a mountain of debt they went to live with maria calotta's mother having lost all but a few of their earthly possessions to bankruptcy at the time finland was part of the russian empire and was divided into two distinct classes of educated and uneducated most formal education was in swedish but change was in the air in 1873 the first finnish language school opened its doors in sibelius hometown and in a moment of foresight his mother enrolled him in it now this was very important because it opened up a whole new world of finnish mythology to him and it fired his imagination became the foundation for much of his music [Music] about 30 years before sibelius was born a group of traditional finnish folk songs and poems were gathered into one volume called the calavala now the richness of this literature and its pathos were transformed by sibelius into a five movement symphonic poem based on couleevo was not like this a dreamer with a passionate love for nature and an extraordinary imagination he was also given to sudden changes of mood from excitable play to deep melancholy seems he had a gentle heart and an affectionate nature but was not brilliant academically but he had a passion for music and played the violin well after finishing school in 1885 sibelius came to helsinki to study law at the same time he enrolled here at the helsinki music institute now the sibelius academy and within a very short time his legal studies faded from view [Music] though he dreamed of a career as a violin virtuoso his time here convinced sibelius that his future lay in composing rather than performing in 1889 his first masterpiece the string quartet in a minor was performed [Music] sibelius continued his studies in berlin and vienna while making his first sketches of the symphonic poem colervo he conducted its first performance here in helsinki in the spring of 1892 it was a resounding success launching sibelius's career as an orchestral composer and conductor sibelius his music sounds as if it has been exhaled from the earth and blown directly into our ears from those ancient finnish forests and frozen lakes and people recognize this quality as soon as sibelius burst onto the scene as a young man in the 1890s he was absolutely the right person at the right time for the finns who after centuries of being in the middle of a territorial and cultural tug of war between the russians and the swedes wanted their independence they wanted to return to their own customs and speak their own language again sibelius became their standard bearer delving for inspiration into his country's vast and wide-ranging folk poetry epic for calabar unlike his contemporaries born williams and bella bartok he doesn't recycle folk music those dark enraptured melodies and that otherworldly sound are all his own take a work like the swan of tuanella sibel is written in 1893 tuanela according to finnish legend is the isle of the dead surrounded by the dark waters of a lake on which floats a single swan cold dark misty altogether bleak sibelius uses the core anglais to be the swan it makes a very good swan to gliding over the motionless waters time even breath is suspended you get the impression that all rhythm has been removed from the music leaving just mood one doesn't expect much dancing after all on an island where everyone is dead in june 1892 he married aino janafeld in her parents home and with that became a part of one of the most aristocratic and well-known finnish-speaking families sibelius had six daughters one of them kirsty died of typhoid as an infant despite these trials and the fact that there wasn't much money until later i know endured it all and was a wonderful mother and grandmother sibelius's granddaughter satu yalas daughter of margareta sibelius and yusi yalas has special memories of her loving grandparents when we were a child he received us in the morning he was still in bed after reading newspapers we were perhaps outside and then my grandmother called now you can come and greet grandpa and then we came there and hello how are you and then always what did you dream this night and then i said perhaps some birds i saw where were these birds did they sing or did they fly we had every detail we had to tell him i played to him something sometimes he took my thumb for instance and just blew the lift and then he said what a tiny little thing or it must grow you must go to to help me and give some eat some food that it becomes bigger [Music] all his life he has walked so much in the forest he was really very very fond of nature he needed and he listened to all the sounds all the possible sounds and all the small details and also the very big sea without shore and sky and colors it is really he had fantastic view of of everything which surrounded him [Music] helsinki is a good-natured city it's small enough to have not to grapple with issues of pollution and traffic jams but big enough to support a significant local culture of course it helps if the people are friendly and they are now i found that the term classical music connotes the wrong sort of thing to many people they think that it's not only supposed to be out of their intellectual league but also that it's anchored way back in the past disconnected from today that's not at all how they feel about it here in finland classical music is alive and well and the composer aino yohani rotavara is living proof his works are played all over the world convincing audiences to share his belief that great music is a glimpse of eternity through the window of time rotovara gave up a window of his time to talk to classical destinations at his home in helsinki [Music] really i think that even politicians and even businessmen consider music important and i think these two we have to thank john siberius for because everybody knows how important his music has been in making finland known internationally he was extremely sensitive to criticism and he still was criticized quite heavily to the very end especially in germany in sweden and that dated his self-criticism guru was going year after year until he burned it off he this whole of his eighth symphony which was there already and that must have been 1942 during the war he burned it that's what his widow told later finland is a land of extremes in summer all around here people are sunning themselves on harbour beaches but even then up north in lapland it can be snowing the flight from finland's capital helsinki to rovaniemi texas due north over 700 kilometers or 433 miles there are many daily flight options flight time to reach this winter or summer wonderland is 80 minutes but on arrival you've entered another world a world full of nature's finest offerings vistas and landscapes lapland stretches across the northerly regions of norway sweden finland and into russia santa's head office is right here in rovaniemi and this is his village unmissable [Music] [Music] this cable marks that imaginary line which fills the heart with all this is the arctic circle and in mid-summer everything north of this line is bathed in perpetual daylight but in mid-winter there's no sun at all [Music] the sami people have lived here for many hundreds if not thousands of years they used to be called laps by most this is now considered derogatory by many sami while one would not immediately associate lapland with outdoor activities it's remarkable how energetic one can become in order to work up a sweat in this culture this is a stunning winter holiday destination you can visit a reindeer park or embark on a dog sleigh ride with your game [Music] or settle for a peaceful horse-driven sleigh ride in the forest they even play golf here on the frozen rivers now that's serious personally i'd rule the line at water sports but some fins just love it soaking up the beauty of this country gives you an understanding of how men like sibelius and rotovara could be so inspired so moved by the beauty of what surrounded them [Music] from the time they were married in 1892 jean and aino sibelius lived in about 10 different places in helsinki and nearby kerava summers were spent with friends but jon also spent long periods away on concert tours abroad the lover of tranquility and space began to yearn for somewhere quieter to live and work nature and the woods here influenced his writing enormously he said in helsinki the song died within me so in 1904 the family moved into his house at javinpa about an hour north of helsinki the house was called ainona in honor of john's long-suffering wife many of the designs for the house were hers the sauna here on their property was built according to eino's design this painting is i know in the 1880s on the rocks by the seashore before she was engaged to jean painted by her brother aero jennafelt the youngest of the sibelius girls heidi made these ceramic bars she was an accomplished ceramicist and earned a bronze medal for her work at the paris world's fair of 1937. jean-deno's oldest daughter ever said of her childhood here many children were small it seemed to us that our home ainola was like a ship on the wide seas and nothing was safe or certain outside it [Music] her feeling that way was understandable the outside world was not altogether safe finland was at the time an autonomous grand duchy ruled by the tsar of russia from 1899 on a period of resistance and social upheaval began in finland which culminated in their declaration of independence in 1917 the same year of course as the russian revolution [Music] though the declaration was final the process was gradual finland acquired its own national parliament in 1906 elected by equal and universal suffrage which made finnish women the first in the world to be granted full national political rights the big tune towards the end of finlandia is one of the most famous in all classical music it's big enough to have roused a whole people to embody their aspirations to define their determination it was for them what churchill's rhetoric was for britain during world war ii its scope is bigger than the sense of individual heroism that you get say in puccini's nesundorma or from turendot and i dare say it's even bigger than the expression of national pride you find in something like elgar's land of hope and glory in my part of the world there's pressure inside it cometh the r cometh the man the finns needed this music and sibelius was its conduit you probably have to be finished to appreciate just how much finlandia must have meant a hundred years ago when sibelius wrote it it became almost de facto the finnish national anthem during their push for independence in fact it bothered the russians so much that they banned it from public performance fancy a nice tune like that being considered so dangerous it must have helped though because the fins won the moral of the tale with apologist in old card is that it's strange how potent the people's music can be though sibelius was rather surprised he thought fernando was pretty insignificant which only proves how hard it is to judge one's own work angela was a place of tranquility and creativity for jean sibelius most of his best-known works were composed here over the years these rooms would have seen some interesting discussions you can imagine one of his daughters asking him papa if your name is johan why does everybody call you jean sibelius's uncle johan had died about a year before he was born and one day the small boy was playing with some things that his uncle had left behind he found a small pack of calling cards or business cards as they call today his uncle had been a sailor and had traveled widely so he had used the french version of his name jean the young sibelius kept the cards and brought them out 20 years later introducing them as his own with the name jean sibelius on them and it stuck [Music] 1908 was a bad year for sibelius he was frequently sick and depressed his doctors found a malignant tumor in his throat after successful surgery to remove it he was warned to give up smoking and drinking this time the composer did as he was asked and stayed on the wagon for eight years sibelius loved listening to records particularly of his own music and when he did he did say with the volume turned right up and sometimes he'd even press his ear against the loudspeaker to hear better but that was pretty well the only sound that was allowed in the house silence was the element in which he had to compose he wouldn't allow even plumbing because it might interfere with his concentration he said silence is speaking the only sound in fact that you could hear is the same sound you can hear today which is that of the wind sowing through the trees a sound which permeates so much of surveillance's music [Music] after his illness sibelius became afraid both of cancer and of dying and this was reflected in his later music his fourth symphony is dark and brooding full of depression and it received a lot of negative criticism at the time he had a friend and patron by the name of axel karpalan who championed his cause and was the first to speak publicly in understanding of the difficult language of the fourth symphony at one time carpellin rescued sibelius from almost certain financial ruin when he died in 1919 sibelius lost a great friend and wrote in his diary for whom will i compose now jean celebrated his 50th birthday in 1915 by conducting the premiere of his fifth symphony soon after the family left finland to distance themselves from the growing tensions associated with the russian revolution jean siberis last published work was written in 1926 appropriately another symphonic poem based on the mythological calavana then he simply retired from music on the occasion of his 70th birthday he made his last public appearance when seven thousand guests including three former presidents of finland attended a concert in his honor however he lived on for another two decades dying at the grand old age of 91. this would have probably surprised some of his doctors but jean said all of the doctors who told me not to smoke and not to drink have died long ago but i'm still living in september 1957 he walked out into these woods looked up to see a wedge of cranes flying south he said here they come the birds of my youth just a few days later he died of a cerebral hemorrhage here at angela at the very same time malcolm sargent was conducting sibelius's fifth symphony in the university assembly hall in helsinki siberius is buried here by his family and after the death of her beloved jean aino stayed on here at enola until her own death in june 1969 it's an astonishing thing to do what sibelius did when he wrote finlandia to embody the soul and the heart of a whole people that's that's who sibelius was when he wrote it just a few years after that beautiful portrait was painted showing him to the passionate tempestuous fiercely concentrated genius that he was and his people knew it he's still their hero their champion 6 000 people a month come to visit this house this symphony of wood is so beautifully called it around 17 000 people paid their last respects to sibelius at his funeral service held here at the great cathedral in helsinki such a small country this nordic destination has been amazing and absorbing as will be our next destination as we head to petersburg the home of tchaikovsky borrowed in muzogsky rimsky-korsakov the list goes on and on not to mention the fabulous art of this famous russian city so keep your bags packed and ready for our next classical destination see you in some petersburg

Channel: Perspective

Views: 10,385

Keywords: Classical music history, Enchanting melodies, European music traditions, Finnish classical heritage, Finnish mythology in music, Finnish orchestral works, Finnish pride, Finnish symphonies, Music of the northern lands, Musical nationalism, National epic music, Nordic classical composers, Nordic composers, Nordic poetry in music, Perspective, Scandinavian cultural roots, Scandinavian musical legacy, Scenic landscapes, Sibelius' orchestral suites, World-renowned composers

Id: XQwZ-y9rRWI

Length: 25min 51sec (1551 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021