# Sibelius Symphony no 4



## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

Every month I focus on works that I don't know well. This month has been Sibelius Symphony no 4. 
Find it very difficult to know it. Don't know if it's just bad memory or a very challenging symphony.

What does anyone else think?


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## Bigbang (Jun 2, 2019)

Judith said:


> Every month I focus on works that I don't know well. This month has been Sibelius Symphony no 4.
> Find it very difficult to know it. Don't know if it's just bad memory or a very challenging symphony.
> 
> What does anyone else think?


I am with you on this--listened to Karajan version. Also have his earlier one from the 50's. I do not waste time worrying about this as it is what it is. Maybe I get it more and start to like it a little if I listen more to Sibelius in general. So I will wait and see what others have to say on this symphony.

But you got me thinking on doing this and not get to many things going at one time. Focus on one work or so every month and see how I progress.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Judith said:


> Every month I focus on works that I don't know well. This month has been Sibelius Symphony no 4.
> Find it very difficult to know it. Don't know if it's just bad memory or a very challenging symphony.
> 
> What does anyone else think?


It is challenging - particularly in it's harmony; I suggest focusing on the slow movement as a way in - the build and catharsis there is very special.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

It is definitely not an easy piece to get to know despite how highly many regard it. Personally it is still not one of my favourites although it has risen in my esteem after hearing a few versions over the last year or so. Sometimes I find that watching a performance of a work allows me to focus more on it with less distractions so try this...


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Bigbang said:


> I am with you on this--listened to Karajan version. Also have his earlier one from the 50's. I do not waste time worrying about this as it is what it is. Maybe I get it more and start to like it a little if I listen more to Sibelius in general. So I will wait and see what others have to say on this symphony.
> 
> But you got me thinking on doing this and not get to many things going at one time. Focus on one work or so every month and see how I progress.


Karajan experienced quite a resistance from the public for his championing of Sibelius. He stuck to his guns in spite of the fact his audience were bored to tears by the music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I love the 4th and consider it one of Sibelius's greatest inspirations, but it's a strange work and I know many have trouble with it. I don't think it left a great impression on me the first time I heard it decades ago, and a friend who was with me at that concert said that he didn't get it either but that it sounded like "important music." Listen to different performances and don't give up.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I too love the 4th. It was the first symphony of Sibelius I was really attracted to and it's still my favorite, along with the 7th. Haven't heard it in a while and I think I'll listen to it today.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Love it. One of his greatest. It is a tough nut to crack and it's never going to be a big hit with general audiences. It's too complex, subtle -- musician's music! It also is one of those works with serious questions on performance: glockenspiel or tubular bells. Unfortunately Sibelius never clarified it, no one seems to have asked him and get a definitive answer. Anyway it's done, the work is very moving, at least for me: that stark ending can haunt you for a long time. I have a lot of recordings, and frankly there's not a bad one in the lot.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

A very personal favorite of mine that I don't often listen to due to the intensity of response it generates in me, but when I do it's always a highly rewarding experience. Those who claim Sibelius was a full-on Romantic have simply not heard this symphony. It's unlike anything else really: a patiently-unfolded landscape of seemingly random muted colors, sounds, and ideas that gradually coalesces into a sublime whole. The third movement always reminds me of an immense ice cap in the Finnish tundra, on one of those midwinter days where nothing moves and the air stings your lungs like a knife, gradually giving way to the distant heat of the sun and breaking apart. Incredibly stark music that like all Sibelius, but possibly most of all his works, rewards repeated listening. I prefer tubular bells in the finale, though the glockenspiel gives it the more "mock cheery" feel that Sibelius may have been going for. Karajan/BPO seems to get a lot of plaudits here, and though it's done well it really is too refined. Ashkenazy and Vanska/Lahti both nail this one for me with the quintessential Sibelian idiom, though for the most unforgiving depths of winter look to Vanska.

As an aside, not that anyone cares, but I have an extremely intimate connection with Sibelius and his 7 symphonies always remind me, at least superficially, of different times of year in the Northwoods:

1. Spring
2. September, though I think of it as more of an epic national narrative than a season
3. Mid-summer
4. Mid-winter
5. Late summer
6. Early winter
7. Fall


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

I think this was my least favorite during my initial listen-through about a year ago, when I was discovering Sibelius' music for the first time, but I like it now. The one to make it click for me was Karajan/Berlin, on DG; he seems to really understand the architecture of the music and executes it in a beautiful way. Very proportional. 

It's still a psychological labyrinth of a work. Sometimes I hear it as a dangerous nighttime trek through the unfamiliar, snowy terrain of the soul, or something like that. Another way of looking at it is like an aural representation of a bout of delirium tremens which ultimately results in a series of dark realizations about the self. Best of all just, think about it as pure music; I only mention those scenarios because there is something about Sibelius' music that is so visual for me. Surely the 4th is Sibelius' darkest, least accessible symphony.


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

I'm glad you posted this. It was somehow perfect for today. After I read your post, I listened to the only recording I have of "Sib 4," Ormandy/Philadelphia 1978. Then I went on a long walk through an area in which I used to go walking 50 years ago. When I got home, I read some Web commentary and listened again. I don't understand this symphony as a sophisticated musician or musicologist might, but I found today that I love it. It evokes for me perceptions of distant pain, like my adolescent Weltschmerz of 50 years ago, and then a kind of relief and gratitude. It somehow harmonized past anxieties with the present strangeness of the pandemic and imparted to me a certain evenness or equilibrium. I tend to like modernist music with its lack of extraneous aestheticism, and this piece is certainly modernist in that sense.

I found an unusually good commentary on the symphony here: http://www.sibelius.fi/english/musiikki/ork_sinf_04.htm


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

An excellent symphony, quite austere in its melodic, harmonic sonorities...to me it really sounds "cold" - open wintry spaces, frozen lakes, grinding ice blocks, freezing winds...I don't know that any such program is intended, but that's how it affects me....
Bernstein/NYPO is my top choice...great orchestral sound, 
Harold Gomberg's (obI) delivery of the opening of mvt II is quite magical - crystal clear, icy tone..remarkable.
Toscanini/NBC is really good too, and Maazel /VPO is fine, also.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Toscanini & Sibelius...who woulda thunk? Just a shame the sound is so antiquated.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Heck148 said:


> An excellent symphony, quite austere in its melodic, harmonic sonorities...to me it really sounds "cold" - open wintry spaces, frozen lakes, grinding ice blocks, freezing winds...I don't know that any such program is intended, but that's how it affects me....
> Bernstein/NYPO is my top choice...great orchestral sound,
> Harold Gomberg's (obI) delivery of the opening of mvt II is quite magical - crystal clear, icy tone..remarkable.
> Toscanini/NBC is really good too, and Maazel /VPO is fine, also.


Oh, I totally forgot about Bernstein! My favorite Sibelius cycle, and this is one of his true winners. He really brings out the various colors in the score.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Heck148 said:


> An excellent symphony, quite austere in its melodic, harmonic sonorities...to me it really sounds "cold" - open wintry spaces, frozen lakes, grinding ice blocks, freezing winds...I don't know that any such program is intended, but that's how it affects me....
> Bernstein/NYPO is my top choice...great orchestral sound,
> Harold Gomberg's (obI) delivery of the opening of mvt II is quite magical - crystal clear, icy tone..remarkable.
> Toscanini/NBC is really good too, and Maazel /VPO is fine, also.


My impressions of the Fourth are virtually identical to yours, though my first choice among interpretations is the Maazel/Vienna version.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

People's descriptions of what the 4th evokes for them are so strikingly similar that it almost forces us to think about how music communicates. Certainly we're all influenced by what we know of Sibelius and his world, and maybe that knowledge is the necessary context for our interpretations. But even given that, it's clear to me that there are sonic analogues to our general human experience that bring our thoughts on the work into wonderful harmony. 

Stravinsky was way off with his "music expresses nothing." I'm more sympathetic to Mendelssohn, who said that what music expresses is not too general to put into words, but too specific. That specificity determines that when we venture to find the words, our words are remarkably similar.


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## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

It's the soundtrack for someone lost in a very cold blizzard... who has a few hallucinations before it's over...

I suppose it could as well be a desert... but it's a harsh landscape...


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Like Sibelius, I live in a land that experiences -40F windchills. I think Sibelius took that experience, channelled it into music along with deeper perceptions of psychology, nature, and his homeland; and created this masterpiece. But it _is_ interesting how we all hear it alike - I didn't read any descriptions of it before hearing it for the first time and it instantly evoked those sensations. For me, Sibelius's music represents something incredibly special, the heartbeat of a land that I instantly connect with. True, there is not much traditional "form" in this symphony, and its harmonic adventurousness makes it very mystifying if you approach it from a purely musical standpoint. I think this music magnifies something that I hold dear. But then again, that brings up the question - would I appreciate it nearly as much if I didn't have that personal element? Many of my favorite works I hear as pure music without a program - the symphonies of Bruckner, for example, and most of Bach and Brahms. But Sibelius is different, and it has me wondering whether it's really the music itself or the evocations it conjures up. Of course you could make similar arguments with opera and other explicitly programmatic music; whether it's the music, the text/program, or the marriage of the two that evokes such strong responses in us. Just food for thought.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Toscanini was very good with Sibelius...his Sym #2 (1940) is outstanding, one of the very best...great "Leminkainin's (sp??) Return" from same same concert. His '51-52 "Finlandia" is best I've ever heard...thrilling account...


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Like Sibelius, I live in a land that experiences -40F windchills. I think Sibelius took that experience, channelled it into music along with deeper perceptions of psychology, nature, and his homeland; and created this masterpiece. But it _is_ interesting how we all hear it alike - I didn't read any descriptions of it before hearing it for the first time and it instantly evoked those sensations. For me, Sibelius's music represents something incredibly special, the heartbeat of a land that I instantly connect with. True, there is not much traditional "form" in this symphony, and its harmonic adventurousness makes it very mystifying if you approach it from a purely musical standpoint. I think this music magnifies something that I hold dear. But then again, that brings up the question - would I appreciate it nearly as much if I didn't have that personal element? Many of my favorite works I hear as pure music without a program - the symphonies of Bruckner, for example, and most of Bach and Brahms. But Sibelius is different, and it has me wondering whether it's really the music itself or the evocations it conjures up. Of course you could make similar arguments with opera and other explicitly programmatic music; whether it's the music, the text/program, or the marriage of the two that evokes such strong responses in us. Just food for thought.


I, too, experience this 'evocation' with Sibelius - and the images are so strong...it's almost as if one were watching a film. Shostakovich can also do this for me.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> Like Sibelius, I live in a land that experiences -40F windchills. I think Sibelius took that experience, channelled it into music along with deeper perceptions of psychology, nature, and his homeland; and created this masterpiece. But it _is_ interesting how we all hear it alike - I didn't read any descriptions of it before hearing it for the first time and it instantly evoked those sensations. For me, Sibelius's music represents something incredibly special, the heartbeat of a land that I instantly connect with. True, there is not much traditional "form" in this symphony, and its harmonic adventurousness makes it very mystifying if you approach it from a purely musical standpoint. I think this music magnifies something that I hold dear. But then again, that brings up the question - *would I appreciate it nearly as much if I didn't have that personal element? Many of my favorite works I hear as pure music without a program - the symphonies of Bruckner, for example, and most of Bach and Brahms. But Sibelius is different, and it has me wondering whether it's really the music itself or the evocations it conjures up. Of course you could make similar arguments with opera and other explicitly programmatic music; whether it's the music, the text/program, or the marriage of the two that evokes such strong responses in us.* Just food for thought.


I believe that even "absolute" music is more representational than it may seem, and that the question you ask is largely a question of degree. The forms of music have great suggestiveness, and though a Mozart symphony may not conjure up anything as concrete as the cold northern forest for us it may conjure up subtle feelings and perceptions for which we simply have no names. People also differ in the degree to which their sense modes communicate with one another; for example, there will be those who get no visual sensations from music, not even Sibelius, and those whose brains paint scenes inspired by music of all sorts.

The idea that there are basic forms underlying perception and thought which can manifest through the different sense modes and "jump" from one mode to another is the premise of the psychological idea of "cross-sensory mapping," an idea especially pertinent to music. The music of Sibelius, with its extraordinary evocative power, seems to me a fantastic validation of this concept.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

It was difficult for me to come to grips with the symphony as well. After reading repeatedly it was the composer's greatest masterpiece in symphonic form I tried many different recordings, heard many different ideas, finally settled on *Ormandy's 1955 recording* from High Definition Tape Transfers. I also liked *Karajan's mono recording* on EMI; he has a special way with Sibelius and hi slow movement is sublime.

Ormandy, another Sibelius specialist, was pals with the composer and perhaps he deciphered the music a little more -- even though he never recorded the (to me) much easier to digest Symphony 3 because he said he didn't understand it. Ormandy was not an interpreter; he put out therre what the composer wrote with his wonderful orchestra.

I'd say just keep listening and sampling and you'll get it. To me the music seems more difficult than it really is. If you think the 4th was tough try the 6th or 3rd or maybe even the 7th that some have called Sibelius's Scandinavian spring.

These were all tough nuts for me to crack. The composer's language in them is not as directly romantic as elsewhere. They are a little more like crossword or table puzzles that pay great dividends to the attentive listener once all the parts are in place.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I'm another fan for the Vienna Maazel. It is powerful and bleak, despite its richness! There are many others (Karajan etc.) but the Maazel has long been the best for me (and it isn't very often a name a personal "best" for any piece).


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

The 4th is one of Sibelius' greatest works. My favourites are Rodzinski / NYPO (1946), Karajan / Philharmonia (1953) and Ormandy / Philadelphia (1954). All mono recordings but fantastic interpretations.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

It doesn't work as background music for sure. I only listened to it once with full attention. It was a harrowing experience. I felt kind of repulsed and uncomfortable, but the music was very intense and powerful. I'll try it out again.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm another fan for the Vienna Maazel. It is powerful and bleak, despite its richness! There are many others (Karajan etc.) but the Maazel has long been the best for me (and it isn't very often a name a personal "best" for any piece).


The Maazel with Pittsburgh is good too.


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## Eramire156 (Sep 28, 2017)

Judith said:


> Every month I focus on works that I don't know well. This month has been Sibelius Symphony no 4.
> Find it very difficult to know it. Don't know if it's just bad memory or a very challenging symphony.
> 
> What does anyone else think?


Hello Judith
Hope all is well, so far as the Sib 4th, it is a tough nut to crack not only for the listener but for the performers, Karajan and Berlin, Sir John and Halle (the mono recording)and Sir Thomas and the Royal Philharmonic (Sibelius 90th birthday concert) get it right. I'm no fan of Karajan but he never lets the tension waver, the Berlin Philharmonic is in glorious form, and though Halle and Royal Phil. can't compete with Berlin both Barbirolli and Beecham are old hands and both bring is a real sense of occasion in their recordings and in the.case of the Beecham their really was, Sibelius' 90th. I've neglected my Sibelius recordings lately, time to get them off the shelf.

If l am having a hard time getting into a piece, I'll listen to it on headphones ( to get the details) after listening to it over speakers to get a sense of the overall structure and the rhythm of a piece.


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

The 4th is my favourite composition by Sibelius. For years I struggled with Sibelius (I'm telling you, as a Finn it's impossible to escape him and I think many of us 'rebel' against him when we're young) but the 4th simply brought me to my knees. I hesitate trying to describe what it makes me feel, though. It's an enduringly interesting and fascinating work, and so expressive in a myriad of ways that it almost comes to a breaking point already in the first movement. But it's not dark in the sense that, say, Shostakovich can sometimes be; and the finale feels like a liberation, but in a totally different way than does the 2nd or the 5th. I don't know, it's so difficult to put into words...


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## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

Barbirolli is very bleak... Karajan is an ice rink with concession stands and a loud sound system...


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

Eramire156 said:


> Hello Judith
> Hope all is well, so far as the Sib 4th, it is a tough nut to crack not only for the listener but for the performers, Karajan and Berlin, Sir John and Halle (the mono recording)and Sir Thomas and the Royal Philharmonic (Sibelius 90th birthday concert) get it right. I'm no fan of Karajan but he never lets the tension waver, the Berlin Philharmonic is in glorious form, and though Halle and Royal Phil. can't compete with Berlin both Barbirolli and Beecham are old hands and both bring is a real sense of occasion in their recordings and in the.case of the Beecham their really was, Sibelius' 90th. I've neglected my Sibelius recordings lately, time to get them off the shelf.
> 
> If l am having a hard time getting into a piece, I'll listen to it on headphones ( to get the details) after listening to it over speakers to get a sense of the overall structure and the rhythm of a piece.


Thank you. Listened to three interpretations today. 
Barbirolli and Halle
N Jarvi and Gothenburg 
Rattle and CBSO.

All from symphony sets. Like N Jarvi the best out of these three because he seems fuller but possibly down to personal taste


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## Sad Al (Feb 27, 2020)

4th is Sibelius at his best, many good recordings, e.g. Inkinen (NZ Symphony on Naxos) and Saraste (early 1990s recording - RCA Victor Red Seal or whatever but it's good).


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Judith said:


> Thank you. Listened to three interpretations today.
> Barbirolli and Halle
> N Jarvi and Gothenburg
> Rattle and CBSO.
> ...


What does "fuller" mean to you?


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

Becca said:


> What does "fuller" mean to you?


Sounding very strong. Some interpretations can seem weak but like I said, personal taste


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

I wrote the following excerpt about Sibelius's Symphony no. 4 on another TC thread, and I think it is worth repeating here. Plus, I've added some additional key information to my previous post:

While I agree that a winter landscape and nature pervade much of Sibelius's music, I don't see his 4th Symphony as primarily connected to winter, at least not explicitly so, not like certain other works, such as the wintry forest in Tapiola. Sibelius called his 4th a "psychological symphony", and it is apparently connected to a 1909 painting by his artist friend, Oscar Parviainen, as the painting was created in the same year as the 4th Symphony: 1909-1910. Indeed, Sibelius prominently hung the painting on the wall by his piano, so that he could look at it as he composed. Like the 4th, Parviainen's painting--entitled "Invocation or Child's Death" or "A Prayer to God" (at Ainola it was called "The Death of a Child")--is a dark, depressing work, which portrays the Spectre of Death looming over a woman praying next to the corpse of her lifeless child on a bed. In fact, it was Sibelius that gave Parviainen the idea for the painting, when he played his own musical theme "A Prayer to God" (Bönen till Gud) for Parviainen while visiting the painter in Paris in 1906. There is indeed a subsequent letter from Parviainen to Sibelius telling the composer that he planned to use "Bönen till Gud" as the theme for a painting (along with a couple of other ideas that Sibelius had given him in Paris, for other paintings, which likewise came to fruition). Interestingly, the musical theme of "A Prayer to God" that Sibelius played for Parviainen in Paris was used in the finale of the composer's 3rd Symphony.*

(*Here's an article on the various art works that hang on the walls at Ainola, which is where I'm getting my information from: http://www.sibelius.fi/english/ainola/ainola_sali_taide.html)

Given the close personal subject matter of the painting and that the work seems to have meant a great deal to Sibelius, it has been associated with the composer's loss of his own daughter, Kirsti, in 1900. Parviainen knew the Sibelius family, and that Aino, Sibelius's wife, had indeed prayed at the deathbed of the little child in 1900. So, it appears that the 4th is 'psychologically' connected to Sibelius and his wife's ongoing mourning over their child. In other words, the symphony is more of a mind scape of despair, grief, and prayer, rather than an evocation of a cold wintry landscape.

It has also been suggested that the 4th is connected to Sibelius's own brush with a cancerous tumor in 1908, as he thought he was dying, and feared that the tumor would return for years afterwards. But whatever inspired the 4th, I agree, it is Sibelius's darkest symphony. So I'm not at all surprised to hear that people connect it to winter and death.

According to Wikipedia, when Sibelius was asked about his 4th Symphony in 1913, he quoted the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, ""Det är synd om människorna" (One feels pity for human beings)." Therefore, it does appear that the symphony is primarily about suffering, grief, and human loss.

The painting is shown and discussed in relation to Sibelius's 4th in the following documentary of Vladimir Ashkenazy's trip to Finland, and visit to Ainola (the section on the painting begins at 9:25 into the film, however, I'd recommend watching the whole film, which is beautifully shot in HD!): 




Yet the inspiration of nature is never far away in the music of Sibelius, and there are lighter parts of the symphony, as well. Indeed, the 4th is dedicated to Sibelius's brother-in-law, the painter Eero Järnefelt, with whom the composer had made a trip to Koli mountain in North Karelia in the autumn of 1909. Sibelius later called the trip to Koli mountain "one of my life's greatest experiences". So, the mountain and lake landscape in North Karelia may have also partly served as inspiration to the composer for parts of his 4th Symphony.

Btw, Okko Kamu's recent recording of the 4th is exceptional--easily the best performance from his somewhat erratic BIS cycle (which also contains a very good 3 & 6), along with Paavo Berglund's various accounts of the 4th (especially the recordings that Berglund made in Bournemouth & Helsinki). In my view, Kamu understands this symphony more deeply than most other Sibelius conductors, and I'd consider his interpretation to be one of the great 4ths on record. But unfortunately, you have to buy the rest of Kamu's rather "problematic" or only "partially successful" cycle, as critic David Hurwitz puts it, in order to acquire Kamu's great 4th on hybrid SACD: https://www.classicstoday.com/review/kamus-partially-successful-sibelius-cycle/. Or, perhaps the 4th can be downloaded separately?

https://bis.se/label/bis/sibelius-the-seven-symphonies


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I love the 4th and consider it one of Sibelius's greatest inspirations, but it's a strange work and I know many have trouble with it. I don't think it left a great impression on me the first time I heard it decades ago, and a friend who was with me at that concert said that he didn't get it either but that it sounded like "important music." Listen to different performances and don't give up.


I must admit, it is one Sibelius work that is not easy to grasp. I think the first two movements go well enough for me, but the third movement, however powerful and moving, feels perfunctory and incomplete (or underdeveloped, as though Sibelius could have traveled further than he did). And the finale, somehow, feels strangely out of place.

It reminds me Nielsen's Second Symphony with its contrasting moods, each of which is assigned to each of the four movements, giving it a characterisque sense of structure and feel. Yet I find it more accessible than Sibelius'.

But I'll stay with it.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

By coincidence, I was listening to Sibelius 4 as this thread popped up (Lahti SO, Vanska). The 4th is the last of the symphonies that I got to know. It is an uncompromising and complex piece, harmonically unsettling and so very dark toned. I wouldn't encourage putting programmatic labels on S's symphonies, though the 4th for me evokes the huge indifference of nature. We just don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Over the years, I have come to listen to the 4th more and more, always finding something new in it, and finding that colossal disinterest almost reassuring.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Pat Fairlea said:


> the 4th for me evokes the huge indifference of nature. We just don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Over the years, I have come to listen to the 4th more and more, always finding something new in it, and finding that colossal disinterest almost reassuring.


Do you know the poetry of Robinson Jeffers?


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## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

I just listened to the 4th for the very first time and what was also the very first time listening to a Sibelius symphony and I don’t really know what to make of it. I’m not used to post 1900 classical music at all, so it seemed like it was all very random and there was no structure. I’m talking about structure within the movements and also how they tie together. The first 3 movements all sounded pretty similar and the last movement was a little faster and more exciting. I didn’t dislike it but I also didn’t like it per se


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

EvaBaron said:


> I just listened to the 4th for the very first time and what was also the very first time listening to a Sibelius symphony and I don't really know what to make of it.


Sibelius 4 is a bit of a tough nut to crack....It took me a long time to really warm up to it....it is probably the composer's most austere, bleak; I find it "icy", crystal clear and cold... melodically and harmonically different - whole tone scales, etc....
other Sibelius symphonies are probably more approachable - but #4 is an excellent piece - 
Don't give up on it!!


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

This performance by the Gothenburg Symphony & Santtu-Matias Rouvali was very well received in the most recent of my blind comparison series. Note that this will probably appear before long on his ongoing cycle on the Alpha Classics label.

[video]https://www.gso.se/en/gsoplay/video/symphony-no-4-3/[/video]


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## golfer72 (Jan 27, 2018)

EvaBaron said:


> I just listened to the 4th for the very first time and what was also the very first time listening to a Sibelius symphony and I don't really know what to make of it. I'm not used to post 1900 classical music at all, so it seemed like it was all very random and there was no structure. I'm talking about structure within the movements and also how they tie together. The first 3 movements all sounded pretty similar and the last movement was a little faster and more exciting. I didn't dislike it but I also didn't like it per se


3,5,7 much more accessible


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## Fredrikalansson (Jan 29, 2019)

It seems pretty unanimous that the 4th is not easy. But it bears repeated listening in a way "easy" pieces do not. For me, it conveys the sense of a world that has lost meaning, whether through a great tragedy, or just through being ground down by the empty routines of daily life. But, there is also catharsis and consolation. Oddly enough, it comes from not being happy. People who pray desperately aren't happy, but they can be consoled.

Pick your favourite (mine is Berglund/Bournemouth), but I also recommend an old BBC Legends recording with Malcolm Sargent conducting. It's insanely atmospheric. The coupling is a rip-snorter of a reading of RVW's 4th. An interesting combination, since both symphonies are a radical departure from what had come before. If you can get hold of these performances, try them. You'll be upset for days. Just perfect for people who listen to classical music because they "find it so relaxing"!


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## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

Yesterday I was in the mood to listen to some new music and since I have just started half a year ago seriously listening to classical music I still have a lot to discover. So yesterday night I also listened to Bach’s Goldberg variations (first time I ever listened to variations) Schubert’s Rosamunde quartet no. 13 (first time I ever listened to a quartet except Boccherini minuet because you hear it everywhere) and Mozart’s 21st violin sonata (first time I ever listened to a violin sonata). Seems very random but the sonata and quartet got recommended to me on YouTube so I thought why not. Sibelius’ 4th and Bach’s Goldberg variations I seeked out myself. What I was trying to say is that i immediately liked the quartet and the sonata, so I know that first I will be discovering more of the classical period before branching out to Sibelius or Bartôk for example. I will definitely not give up on Sibelius’ 4th and I know that it might take a while. When the time comes for Sibelius’ symphonies I will start with a more accessible one like the 3rd or 5th. If anyone’s interested I listened to Karajan’s dg account because I heard he has a very good 4th but I will also be listening to your recommendations down the road


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

The just-released Oslo Phil with Klaus Mäkelä is on YouTube and it's very good (IMO).

I had no problems with it on first hearing until I got to the 4th movement. The silly glockenspiel seemed calculated to undermine the sombre mood. That may have been the point, but it irritated nevertheless.

The irritation has diminished, partly after listening to BBC Radio 3's Building A Library analysis.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

golfer72 said:


> 3,5,7 much more accessible


1 and 2 even more accessible!

I can never remember the details but isn't there a dispute if the glockenspiel in the last movement might have been a misunderstanding and a different type of bells (tubular bells, "Röhrenglocken" in German) with a more sombre sound was meant? Or was it the other way round and people did use the other bells because the glockenspiel appeared so jarring?


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

I got myself the score of the 4th Symphony a few months ago. I must admit I had no idea how complicated the score is and looks like. Especially the finale! Oh my.

(Also I had no idea how simple the 6th Symphony score looks like! Looks simple but the music behind is most pure, thoroughly felt, thought out and contemplated.)

(For some reason it still was the 7th symphony score that suprised me the most. Because there was so much orchestral effects and treasures hidden underneath the surface.)


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