Sibelius 7 is part of Beyond the Score, a concert series that brings music into dialogue with the wider arts. This time, we explore our relationship with the sea. Orchestral works by Saariaho, Britten and Sibelius meet soundscapes by Vera Cavallin, revealing the richness and fragility of marine life through sound.

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Wild waves, sweeping seascapes, unfathomable depths: the sea has stirred the imagination for centuries. For Kaija Saariaho, too, it was a source of inspiration. She wrote Vista after a drive along the Pacific coast, during which she stopped several times to admire the landscape, the light and the horizon. In Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes, the sea takes on many guises. The music comes from his opera Peter Grimes, about a fisherman for whom the sea is both a daily companion and a mirror of his troubled inner world. Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony makes no explicit reference to the sea, yet evokes the elemental power of nature. The music unfolds in an unbroken flow, as though larger, slower forces of nature were shaping our experience of time and space.

Together, these works invite us to reflect on our relationship with the sea. We find peace in it and allow ourselves to be swept away by its beauty. Yet beneath the surface lies a world we barely know, mysterious and sometimes even frightening. It is also a fragile ecosystem that we belong to, yet increasingly disturb. The more estranged we become from that world, the more we lose touch with our own place in nature.

Harpist, composer and producer Vera Cavallin invites us to listen to this hidden world. Her underwater recordings from the Azores reveal the richness of marine life, but also the noise of ships’ engines that disrupts communication between animals. She has woven these recordings into compositions that serve as interludes, connecting the orchestral works in a continuous flow of sound. Before and after the concert, a soundscape fills the space with gentle underwater sounds. The sea thus resonates throughout the concert: as a source of wonder and as a question in sound about our relationship with life above, around and below sea level.

Concept: Gerd Van Loy