Sibelius by Scandanavians

| Jul 11, 2014 |

In August of 1990 I moved to Sweden with my fiancée Cathy, now my wife, in order to play with the Malmö Symphony. At the time the position was for one year, but I stayed on for a second season before moving to Modena, Italy, for a very short time, and then to Freiburg, Germany, where I have lived since March 1993.

My first week with the Malmö Symphony was the beginning of a lesson that will last the rest of my life. The featured piece on the program that week was the magnificent Second Symphony of Jean Sibelius, a piece I had played many times in the United States. Yet it wasn’t until that week that I had ever really played the piece, because I had never done it with a Scandinavian orchestra.

During that week I got a glimpse of the way Scandinavians play Sibelius. All the differences essentially came down to an attitude about Sibelius and his music. The music was not just great; it was also important. Bo Nilsson, my friend and trumpet player in the orchestra who was responsible for my getting the position, used the rehearsals to teach me how to phrase certain passages of Sibelius in a Scandanavian way instead of an American way. It was a great week, but it was just the beginning of my education about the culture of countries as it relates to their great works of music.

Years later I invited the Russian violinist Nicolas Chumachenko to one of our weekly master classes at the Freiburg Musik Hochschule in order to discuss Russian music and to hear students play some of standard Russian trumpet literature. At the beginning of the master class I asked him to talk about Russian culture and style, which he did, and to demonstrate and play excerpts from the Tchaikowsky Violin Concerto, first in a non-Russian style and finally as a Russian would play it, with Russian inflections and phrasings. It was the same experience as with Sibelius—the first version was beautiful, the second version was Tchaikowsky.

What I have come to realize is that each country has its own musical treasures: Russia its Tchaikowsky, Prokofieff, Shostakovich; Germany its Bach, Beethoven, Brahms; France its Debussy and Ravel; and so forth. The United States has its Copland and Gershwin but also its Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis. And it seems to me that a big difference between the United States and these other countries is that the United States doesn’t revere its artists as other countries do. The first time I was in the Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia at that time), I heard a Dvorak symphony performed by the same orchestra and in the same hall where Dvorak premiered the piece over a hundred years before. When I walked by a record store, there were displays of the latest recordings of music by Dvorak, Smetana, and Janacek. I have never seen anything like that in an American record store.

I learned several things from experiences such as these. The first is that the United States must learn to value and revere its musical treasures – as John Steinbeck said in a letter to John Kennedy, “A nation may be moved by its statesmen and defended by its military but it is usually remembered for its artists.” The second is more personal and practical. Each of us, in playing music of different countries and cultures, can seek out performances by groups from that country and emulate their particular phrasings and style. With Youtube and the Internet it is now possible to keep one’s own traditions while at the same time playing composers from other countries in a style that captures their essential spirit.

Sibelius by Scandinavians is not just beautiful. It’s Sibelius.