About the Music

Duncan Hume wrote in the 1908 edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians:

“Sibelius is a composer who must be taken on his own merits; it would be difficult to compare him to anyone else, the whole atmosphere of his work is so strange, and so permeated with lights and shadows that are unfamiliar, and colours that are almost from another world. Sibelius has much to say; much that is new and much that no one else could either imagine or express.”

Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 has stimulated considerable discussion as to its meaning. Sibelius himself thought of it as “a struggle between death and salvation” and “a confession of the soul”. Others tended from the outset to cite its strong national character. In any event, his Symphony No. 2 is a magnificent work.

– Peter Gutmann