Each time I go to Finland to conduct, I am struck by the immense strength and vitality of Sibelius as a man, also by his infinite range of thought, feeling and imagination, and by his closeness to Nature. When talking he is equally at home in Music, Philosophy, Religion or in the simplest things in Life. Just as Rembrandt, El Greco and many other painters have made portraits of themselves in color, so has Sibelius, perhaps unconsciously, made a portrait of himself in tone, in his Second Symphony. His music is like a song of all the people, and all the forests and lakes of his country. He sings the exotic oriental, and the exhilarating Northern spirit of Finland's Life and Art. Finland is a melting pot of all kinds of people, just as is America. America is blending all these races today, but Finland did this centuries ago in pre-historic times. In Finland the contrast of blue-eyed fair people of the North with dark oriental-looking types is startling. All this rich folklore, and Sibelius' personal characteristics, are in his Second Symphony. Although in classical form, it is a free and rhapsodic expression of Sibelius' inner life of feeling and fantastic imagination - it is the essence of Finland. Sibelius retains the classical four parts of symphonic form, but fills them with utterly original and often explosive music. Great music always has great themes - these themes, or melodies, or "tunes," - remain in the listener's memory to be sung or whistled as an intimate part of the music-lover's life. This Symphony has inexhaustible variety of themes and moods, sometimes rustic, as if voices of people, at other times like fantastic cries of Nature - rushing, impulsive waves of sound, like violent wind on the surface of a lake, or through the high trees of a forest. At still other times the theme begins small, like a seed or germ, and gradually grows into the completed form of its final statement and musical message. In some parts is an atmosphere of melancholy loneliness, as in remote distances of the Northland, which suddenly changes into a mood of human warmth and tenderness. This Symphony is remarkable for the long lines and almost primitive simplicity of its themes, as if Nature were singing - deep voices surging out of the earth - higher voices answering and contradicting each other, with a feeling of conflict. Sometimes individual instruments seem to be talking to each other in friendly agreement and sympathy - at other times masses of instruments seem to be driven and lashed by inexorable Fate. Typical of Sibelius is contrast of the savage with the tender, of the dark timbres with the brilliant, of the combining of a theme expressing both Fate and Hope, sounding in relief above a melancholy and monotonous background. Typical also the vast vistas of the final growth where all the themes combined lead triumphantly to the ultimate statement, which culminates the whole symphony with eloquent expression of human warmth, strength, compassion, love.
