Romeo and Juliet, a fantasy overture based on Shakespeare’s tragedy, was Tchaikovsky’s first work after the works of the great British playwright and with it began the composer’s “Shakespearean line”.
The idea of composing this symphonic piece came from Mily Balakirev. According to Tchaikovsky’s friend Nikolai Kashkin, it emerged during a walk in May in 1869: “Balakirev, Tchaikovsky and I were immensely fond of long walks and sometimes would go on them together. I remember that on one of them Mily Alexeyevich suggested a plan for the Romeo and Juliet overture…”
Balakirev not only suggested the idea – he also wrote out an extremely detailed plan for the entire work including directions as to how the general idea, thematic material, tonal plan and composition of the emergent work should be developed. Tchaikovsky had no objection whatsoever to such detailed “instruction” from Balakirev, and executed it all precisely. One of the reason’s for the composer’s submissiveness could have been Tchaikovsky’s admiration for the singer Désirée Artôt, which, as it happens, emerged when he was writing the first version of the overture. Shakespeare’s plot immediately took hold in Tchaikovsky’s soul. Later a second version was written (1870) and, much later, a third (1880), which is what we know today.
Later Tchaikovsky intended to write an opera based on Romeo and Juliet. The idea, however, remained unfulfilled. But the Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture was the composer’s favourite dramatic work throughout his life.
Yekaterina Yusupova
Jean Sibelius wrote almost a hundred songs. While for chorus he predominantly opted for verse in Finnish, most of his songs are in Swedish. Throughout his life, in choosing texts Sibelius' favourite authors were the Finnish romantic of Swedish descent Johan Ludvig Runeberg and Abraham Viktor Rydberg – "Sweden's last romantic". Many of the songs, Op 13 and 36–38, composed between 1891 and 1903, bring to mind romantic ballads with their declamatory structure and gloomy denouements. The Echo Nymph (1915) is in a completely different style – as if it were a reference by the Finnish composer to Rimsky-Korsakov's The Nymph (1898).
With the dawn of orchestral song in the early 20th century, Sibelius instrumented several of his early songs and, subsequently, several new ones. The orchestral repertoire was added to by such works as the miniature The First Kiss, Black Roses with its pure piano accompaniment and Autumn Evening, where in the piano version the accompaniment is extremely "miserly". The choice may have been rather inpredictable - but that was the choice of the composer.
In terms of the number of symphonies he has composed, Leif Segerstam has long since surpassed Joseph Haydn and Christian Cannabich. To date, he has produced no less than three hundred works in the genre (and Segerstam has composed other cycles of works for orchestra, among them Impressions of Nordic Nature, Bouquets of Flowers and Epitaphs). Segerstam writes, as he breathes, instantly recording on sheet music the things that he sees with his eyes and of which he dreams and that come to his mind. Several symphonies carry the secondary title of Page from a Diary. The “technique of free pulsation” developed by the conductor and composer, which does not require the precise synchronisation of every voice of the orchestral fabric, has allowed him to complete a score in roughly one week.
Written last year, Symphony No 288 bears the title Letting the Flow Go on... The work lasts some twenty-five minutes, and Segerstam has just recently recorded it on the same disc featuring Brahms' First Symphony.
When he completed his Seventh Symphony on 2 March 1924, Jean Sibelius was not to know that it would be his last symphony; he was not even sure that it was a symphony per se. The work now known as Symphony No 7 in C Major was first performed on 24 March that year under the baton of the composer as Symphonic Fantasia No 1. Initially Sibelius had conceived a major symphony "about the joy of living and life's energy" which was to conclude with a "Hellenic rondo". However, according to his very own words, "the river itself carves its own path". As a result, from the initial sketches there emerged a one-movement piece lasting shortly over twenty minutes (even somewhat shorter than the incredibly laconic Sixth Symphony), and nevertheless it is grandiose. It contains absolutely no solos, there are no romantic "lonely voices". The instruments appear in great masses, groups or albeit in pairs (as in the first bars where there is the theme of starlight from Sibelius', alas, unfinished symphonic poem The Daughter of the Moon). In the Seventh, everything is kept in an objective tone. The "Hellenic rondo" for it was never actually written by Sibelius, though he did refer to the theme of the trombones as being "of the ancient world".
Anna Bulycheva
