Sibelius Symphony No 5

摘要

Some of the Sibelius symphonies (not the more abstract Nos 4 and 6) suggest to me a kind of journey. None more so than No 5 -at journey's end those mysterious six spaced ff chords, the last two introduced by the timpanist. Sibelius conducted the Helsinki premiere on his 50th birthday (1915) but wasn't satisfied with the outcome. He introduced a revised version one year later (the material has not been found since) but then continued to work on the score -not only changing the structure from a four- to three-movement symphony but adding the opening horn-call and changing the ending, which at first had been more like that in his Symphony No 2.