Sibelius 7
PROGRAMME NOTES
written by AURÉLIE WALSCHAERT
Kaija Saariaho Vista (2019)
Benjamin Britten Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a (1944)
Jean Sibelius Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105 (1914-1924)
Beyond The Score concept by Gerd Van Looy (artistic coordination), Vera Vacallin & Christophe Albertijn (sound art)
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03.12.2026 FLAGEY BRUSSELS
06.12.2026 FLAGEY BRUSSELS
Sibelius 7
The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) did not just hear music; she could also see its sounds in her mind. ‘The visual and the musical world are one to me. [...] Different senses, shades of colour, or textures and tones of light, even fragrances and sounds blend in my mind,’ she once explained in an interview. In Vista, she invites listeners into her colourful musical universe to hear and see the ocean views between Los Angeles and San Diego. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), too, reveals different facets of the sea in his Four Sea Interludes: at dawn, on a gently rippling Sunday morning, by moonlight or in the midst of a storm.The music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), the godfather of Finnish music, is an ode to the beautiful landscapes of his homeland. Yet there is little landscape painting in his seventh and final symphony. It is chiefly the result of a purely musical quest for a new symphonic form. The work unfolds in a single, imaginative movement in C major, a key to which the listener’s gaze is repeatedly drawn.
New horizons
During a night-time drive from Los Angeles to San Diego after a series of concerts in 2019, Saariaho stopped several times to admire the ocean views. ‘Later I realized that most places were called vistas. As I literally also felt that new music was flowing into my mind and opening new kinds of ideas for the piece, I started calling it simply Vista,’ she explained. Gradually, the music took shape in her mind, and on her return to Paris she began composing. Having just completed her fifth opera, Innocence, she deliberately turned to an orchestral work so she could ‘focus purely on the orchestral sound, without having to think about the balance between voices or the development of different characters’.
For this new orchestral composition, Saariaho set herself a fresh challenge: she left out the harp, piano and celesta – three instruments that had consistently played a unifying role in her earlier works. This forced her to seek out new orchestral colours and textures, while giving more space to the individual sound worlds of the woodwinds. From the outset, she envisaged a structure in two contrasting movements. Both draw on the same musical material, used differently each time. Horizons opens up a broad, peaceful panorama built on delicate lines and textures, while the second movement, Targets, brings a succession of new, energetic combinations into view.
The sea as a mirror
In 1942, three years after fleeing his homeland to escape the looming war and a hostile music press, Britten set foot on English soil again. Another three years later, he completed Peter Grimes, the opera that would establish his international reputation. Based on George Crabbe’s 19th-century poem The Borough, the story is set in a fishing village that closely resembles Britten’s own home on the cold, bleak North Sea coast. Its central character, Peter Grimes, is an outsider who longs to escape the gossip of his fellow villagers. He hopes to save enough money to marry the widow Ellen Orford and put an end to his miserable existence. But his pride and uncontrolled anger stand in his way.
Britten selected four of the opera’s six orchestral interludes to create an independent suite. Together, they form a psychological portrait of the sea, reflecting the turmoil both within Grimes and in the world around him. While Dawn sketches the landscape against which the story unfolds, the cheerful Sunday Morning presents the open water as a place where Grimes can feel free. But this peace is short-lived. In the dark Moonlight, gently pulsing waves and raindrops swell into a powerful storm. In the final movement, loud brass and percussion give voice to Grimes’ inner and outer struggles. Tragedy is inevitable: the villagers suspect him of causing the deaths of his apprentices, and he ultimately meets his downfall.
True to the key
After first mentioning a seventh symphony in December 1917 – then conceived as a work in three movements, ending with a ‘Hellenic rondo’ – Sibelius announced on 2 March 1924 that he had completed his Fantasia sinfonica I. At its premiere in Stockholm on 24 March 1924, he still deliberately called the work a ‘symphonic fantasia’, unsure whether a composition in a single, continuous movement deserved the name ‘symphony’. Only after the second performance did he conclude that the work did indeed possess enough of a symphony’s essential characteristics. In 1925, he therefore published it as Symphony No. 7 in C major (in one movement), Op. 105.
Sibelius had already experimented with merging symphonic movements. In his Third Symphony, he combined the final two movements; in his Fifth, the first two. In the Seventh, he takes this process to its furthest point. A slow movement, scherzo, sonata form, rondo and grand symphonic coda merge into a single, unbroken arc of tension. Yet the symphony never sounds like an amorphous mass: clear turning points mark its underlying structure, signalled by shifts between C major and C minor and subtle changes of tempo. A broad, hymn-like trombone theme also repeatedly reaffirms the home key of C major, providing another beacon for the listener.
