This Finnish conductor of Falstaffian dimensions was a characterful interpreter of the works of Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, Allan Pettersson, Einojuhani Rautavaara, and other composers perhaps further afield. He served, at various times, as artistic director/chief conductor of the Stockholm Royal Opera, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Danish National Radio Symphony, and the Savonlinna Opera Festival.
He was also a violinist, a pianist, and a composer. If, by chance, he ever found himself with extra time on his hands, he would simply churn out a symphony. By the time of his death he had composed 371 of them. (That is not a typo.) He also wrote 30 string quartets, 13 violin concertos, 8 cello concertos, 4 viola concertos, and 4 piano concertos.
Although he could hardly be said ever to have been a model of fitness, I am shocked to see him go. He always seemed to be inextinguishable, the very embodiment of Joulupukki, the Finnish Santa Claus, which he so strongly resembled.
The name Leif is of Scandinavian origin and is associated with the Viking Age. What are the odds that this most vibrant and eccentric of Nordic conductors would die on Leif Erikson Day?
Segerstam was 80 years-old. The man was a beast. R.I.P.
Segerstam conducts Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5
Just try to forget this “Scheherazade,” with its highly unconventional, piratical conclusion
Cutting to the chase
Rautavaara’s “On the Last Frontier,” after Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” with Rautavaara in attendance
Yesterday, I spent part of the day, for Labor Day, cleaning out my boiler room. I moved in here in 2016, and there are still boxes I have never gone through. In fact, in shifting everything around so often, I don’t even know where some of the boxes are. Occasionally, I’ll stumble across one squirreled away in the unlikeliest of places.
Allow me to clarify that I ran an antiquarian book business in Philadelphia for 13 years, so it’s not because I’m a common hoarder; I’m a professional one! I’ve also got a storage space that very badly needs to be gone through and closed out. Who knows what’s in some of those boxes.
All this is preamble to stating that yesterday, somewhere in a leaning tower of cardboard against one of the walls, I uncovered a large box labelled “DESK + BEHIND (SIBELIUS).” Hmm, I wonder if this could be, at long last, the box that contains my lost Sibelius photo – the one signed by the composer in 1934 and given to me by his grandson, who, if I understood him correctly, brought it to me from the composer’s home, Ainola? In any case, he brought it back with him from one of his trips to Finland. I washed my hands and thoroughly dried them and began a careful examination of the ark’s contents.
Sure enough, at the bottom of the box, beneath a Lord Dunsany paperback, an edition of “Pinocchio” illustrated by Sergio Leone, and a mountain of bookstore-related papers, I discovered another, smaller box, which contained not only the Sibelius photo, but a few other treasures, including a letter written by Charles Gounod, an autographed photo of Birgit Nilsson, and a first printing, from 1910, of some sheet music from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s ballet-pantomime “Der Schneemann” (“The Snowman”), written when the composer was 11-years-old.
You never know what you’re going to find when you clean house with Classic Ross Amico!
Spent a refreshing afternoon today in Finland, thanks to my internet radio and Yle Klassinen. Of course, they’re ahead, so it was really evening for them. The programming is about the furthest thing from the kind of dumbing down that’s sadly become the norm for so much U.S. classical music radio. I had the station on for seven hours today. No single movements. Complete works only. And surprisingly few warhorses. In fact, I think I recognized maybe four pieces. And trust me, I know A LOT of classical music. Fortunately, they post the playlists on their website, which can be translated into English. A good thing, too, as I can’t understand a thing the hosts are saying. But if I listen often enough, I expect I’ll be speaking Finnish in a month. Just got to enjoy my first Sibelius symphony (the Symphony No. 3, with Sakari Oramo conducting) transmitted directly from Finland. Thank you, Yle Klassinen!
‘Tis the season of bitter temperatures and falling snow – or it should be. Keep your spirits up and feather your nest, this week on “The Lost Chord,” with music inspired by Finland’s avian life.
Einojuhani Rautavaara’s concerto for birdsong and orchestra, “Cantus Arcticus,” from 1972, incorporates tape recordings made by the composer on the bogs of Liminka, near the Arctic Circle. More than just a gimmick, the piece is an inspiring triptych that manages to transcend its potentially New Age conceit. The work falls into three movements: “The Bog,” “Melancholy,” and “Swans Migrating.” The final movement takes the form of a long crescendo for orchestra, and incorporates the songs of whooper swans.
Jean Sibelius’ uplifting Symphony No. 5 culminates in a grand theme inspired by swans in flight around his home on the shores of Lake Tuusula in Järvenpää. The symphony is standard repertoire, but we’ll hear it as it was first performed in 1915, before it was substantially revised to become the masterwork we know today.
Encountering the Fifth in its original guise illuminates the composer’s remarkable clarity of purpose, uncanny objectivity, and iron will in reshaping his raw materials to achieve a loftier, definitive vision. It’s not for nothing that Sibelius was described by one critic as “a great artist whose imagination has the wings of an eagle.”
Take flight with Finnish music. I hope you’ll join me for “Snow Birds,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM ON THE EAST COAST)
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM ON THE EAST COAST)
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM ON THE EAST COAST)
Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!
Unexpectedly, I got to spend a few hours with a very good friend on New Year’s Eve, a high point of the holiday – perhaps THE high point. He’s been in the act of overhauling his living room, taking up the carpet, replacing the furniture, and, his greatest source of pride, enhancing his entertainment center.
So we listened to Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp (yes, folks, that is how I like to celebrate New Year’s Eve) and “Straussiana,” and, since he’s also a ‘70s prog rock guy (when we were teenagers, I remember, I would sometimes see him at school wearing a Yes t-shirt), we fell into a discussion about unexpected quotations of classical music in ‘70s popular song.
That’s when he put on “Beach Baby.” “Beach Baby,” written by John Carter and his wife, Gillian Shakespeare, became the only substantial hit for the band The First Class in 1974. It clearly emulates the carefree endless summer sound of The Beach Boys, in ironic contrast to the lyrics which suggest it’s all now a faded memory, at least as far as the love relationship is concerned.
So I’m sitting there, my thoughts drifting to Wawa Hoagie Fest jingles, when all of a sudden what should appear in the firmament but the noble “swan theme” that climaxes Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5! Talk about out of left field.
Sibelius, Finland’s national composer, wrote the 5th on a commission from the Finnish government to celebrate his 50th birthday. That’s how big a deal Sibelius was and is in Finland. The last movement builds to a climax of impressive grandeur, a sublime apotheosis in the form of an ennobling “swan theme” (identified as such, as Sibelius specifies in his journal that it was the sight of swans in flight over a lake near his home that inspired it). The 5th Symphony is among the noblest in the entire literature, and I have long regarded it as my favorite symphony.
And here it was, hilariously, seemingly out of nowhere, in “Beach Baby.”
Somehow its use got back to the Sibelius estate, as a lawsuit was filed against the songwriters for copyright infringement. The case was settled out of court, with the estate receiving half of the song’s proceeds.
But I guess it was worth it, as it became the band’s biggest hit. In fact, it was the band’s only hit. Although they went on to release two studio albums and a number of singles, The First Class was unable to replicate the success of “Beach Baby.” Maybe if they had gone on to appropriate the big tune from Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2…
Interestingly, Trenton composer George Antheil, who never seemed to have a problem with aping the styles of his contemporaries, also “borrowed” a passage from Sibelius’ 5th. I’ve never seen anything to the effect that he received a cease-and-desist because of it. Then again, it’s not quite so blatant unless you really know Sibelius’ symphony. For some reason, he poaches not the “swan theme,” but rather a scurrying passage in the strings introduced at the opening of the last movement (preceding the big tune). Did George really get away with it? He WAS the Bad Boy of Music.
All in all, a New Year’s Eve well spent.
Once you know “Beach Baby,” it’s easy to detect a suggestion of the Sibelius tune at the opening, but the blatant crib appears around three minutes in.
In this recording of Antheil’s Symphony No. 3, his Sibelius crib appears for the first time, in the second movement, around 17 minutes in. Here, I cued it up for you.
Finally, the last movement of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5, in all its glory
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The Sibelius estate says, see you in court!
