Impromptu for Strings, Op. 5 - by Jean Sibelius

Impromptu for Strings, Op. 5 by Jean Sibelius

Performed Saturday, March 16th, 2024 | Broadmoor Community Church

Conductor: Thomas Wilson
Audio/Video: Michael Lascuola
Program Notes: Lt. Col. Jason K. Fettig

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius dedicated his life’s musical work to his native country. His music is saturated by the influence of Finland’s language, traditions, and extensive folklore. Perhaps more significantly, however, his works reveal a much more organic connection to his homeland. Sibelius drew creative energy from the very soil of Finland; its mountains, rivers, valleys, and forests all contributed to his inimitable musical language. Although Sibelius’ music ranges from hyperconservative to, at times, startlingly modern, his works always seem to germinate from the sights, sounds, and smells of the natural world.

Sibelius entered university in Helsinki as a law student, but it quickly became apparent that music was his calling. He initially endeavored to be a violinist, but his natural abilities on the instrument were far surpassed by his talents in composition and he began serious study as a composer first in Helsinki and later in Berlin and Vienna. When Sibelius embarked on his career as a composer in earnest, he found immediate success in 1892 with his tone poem Kullervo, the first of many such works inspired by the legendary Finnish epic, the Kalevala. The following year, he composed a set of piano Impromptus, Opus 5, and these were the first to be published among many short piano works Sibelius composed throughout his career. Sibelius biographer Guy Rickards called these “one of [Sibelius’] most charming sets of piano pieces,” and the collection has remained exceedingly popular with both professional and amateur pianists alike. The Fifth Impromptu is especially regarded as a miniature masterpiece and is firmly established in the repertoire of most Finnish pianists.

Sibelius did not compose any new music during the last twenty-five years of his life, yet he arranged several of his piano works for orchestra and often revisited other music he had composed many years prior. His Impromptu for String Orchestra is one such piece and cleverly combines the fifth and sixth piano pieces from the Opus 5 set, in E minor and E major respectively. The outer sections feature the noble and lyrical lines of the Fifth Impromptu, while the gentle waltz feel of the Sixth Impromptu serves beautifully as the central “trio” section of this creative synthesis. The music of the Sixth Impromptu was also used in Sibelius’ Melodrama from ‘Svartsjukans nätter’ (‘Nights of Jealousy’), where it accompanies the text “if you once stood, shrouded in the misty haze, on the hilltop, in the spring morning’s embrace….”