Symphony No. 2 in D Major

Right from its premiere, conducted by Robert Kajanus in Helsinki on 8 March 1902, Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 was considered a watershed in the culture of his native Finland. Begun while he was staying in the Italian Riviera town of Rapallo, it became his longest and grandest such piece, but is no less innovative for that. Alternately ruminative and restless, the opening “Allegretto” subtly elaborates its ideas as it builds toward the climactic statement of its main melody, then subsides into a return of the initial bars. With its sombre introduction for pizzicato strings, the lengthy slow movement centres on two themes—the first brooding and tinged by folk elements, the second ethereal and consolatory—that are duly intensified when repeated. A quixotic coda channels the accumulated storm and stress to an anguished close. Marked “Vivacissimo”, the energetic scherzo finds contrast in a lullaby-like trio for oboe, its second appearance becoming a transition into the “Allegro moderato” finale. The contrast between its main themes—the first songful and majestic, the second speculative and hieratic—could not be greater, the latter’s reappearance leading straight into a coda that could be heard as triumphal or cathartic. But then the Symphony taken overall can be regarded either as an heroic prophecy of Finnish autonomy or, as Sibelius himself was later to describe it, a “confession of the soul”.