Little girl. little C. Little. The it was. Good. C C i am. A lot. 2 do to the Going. a schoolboy many published in 1900 come so close I'm sure you saw. Really the queen of the piece before 50 times. You know how but so. Has become he's the guy. Flying with you right to. You to reach. The World. Emptiness or really created world so I want to build a New Testament sounds good so by this creates. Well after the interval to come see Zachary or Mo rejoin the big symphony orchestra for another vocal time poem and one that might have been inspired by survey this is new on the ta though automatic counters echo using the ancient Greek myth of echoing Narcissus is a very different piece impressionistic dramatic and tonight is its u.k. Premiere that's before the orchestra Zachary Oromo and their surveillance symphony cycle with the glorious 2nd later during the interval here on Radio 3 I'll be talking to Sakura about the music in the 2nd half but 1st I'm joined by the b.b.c. Radio 3 new generation think a live abroad from Oxford University to discuss of Alias and his theatrical sense among other things so many is said undergone an operation for a tumour in his throat in 1989 it was successful but left him with Lost in concerns he vowed to give up smoking drinking in the following few years as he approaches his 50th birthday he feels he's being left behind not least musically with the appearance of composers like Schoenberg So it's about his tries to find a new direction for his own music. We just heard is part of that exploration heading in an entirely different direction is the music he wrote in the same year 913 for the pantomime Scaramucci only continuous dramatic score this is the stately but atmospheric minuet that opens the piece set in the house for all the decadent young man called Les long. 2 you. The opening of Sebelius is music for the pantomime Scaramucci performed on that recording by the government book Symphony Orchestra conducted by name a yacht of a well Radio 3 new generation think a liberal which has joined me in the box Welcome thank you Scaramucci is a major suppose you're scored over an hour long why do we hear total Well I think one of the reasons is because it's a pantomime and the fact that it was written not just as a pantomime but it also has the inclusion of some bits of spoken word as well so it's a really unusual mix but it's a fantastic score it really deserves to be heard more often because it's so pivotal in Sebago says life from work as well but I'll try massacre in a few minutes exactly why he hasn't programmed it all right. But it is through composed score and it raises the question of how Sibelius opera would have sounded Did he ever consider composing one yes he did and in fact he did write one opera short one out top record the maiden in the tower but I think there are 2 main reasons why Sibelius didn't actually complete a full opera number one his language so he 1st starts thinking about writing a full scale opera in the early 8 $190.00 s. But the thing is that language is very politicized infinite time and the competitions that were being run to write an opera the libretto had to be in Finnish which actually was only supposed a 2nd language his 1st language was Swedish and so I think the task of writing a full scale opera in his 2nd language was actually quite daunting for him but the other reason is Bogner in the 892 when he thinks about writing this opera called the building of the boat it's conceived as a finished answer to the Wagnerian apic but as Sebago thinks about becoming a composer of the 20th century rather than a relic of the 19th Bugner become somebody who he doesn't need to respond to or against but can really start to move beyond and I think this is what he's doing with a school like Sky I mean she turns to the very modern and contemporary art form of dance and turns away from opera which she starts to see is a bit more traditional if you like by 1930. In these years before the 1st World War the question of gender relationships is being discussed quite a lot in supposes circle very different conceptions of women perhaps in we've just heard and in Scaramucci Yes hugely different no one is how you know we have this mystic nature figure and in blonde Elaine who is one of the characters in scar image we have this woman who is sexually unfulfilled by her partner and who falls into this love triangle that eventually proves her own demise and that's a very different type of woman trying to get. What was said Bayliss is relationship with his wife around the period of the 2nd Symphony which ends tonight's concert he was pretty self-centered to put it mildly was not always the case well I think Sebago says absolutely in love with his wife yes he did some things which now seem rather unusual particular when he sort of runs off and really goes to pursue his own artistic path but you know sort of put some put these in a way but she also is very clear with him you know when he gets too much he said I will not sit in a concert and what she do this I'm just not coming so kudos to her she kept him in line sometimes I think I mean. But it's a scary movie because there's this title character that I just wonder about a bit of a black robe hunchbacked dwarf player is what it says here infatuated with blonde Elaine is there any relevance to Sebelius himself so I think the main relevance is Scaramouche to Sebelius is he's created for all within the drama so in scar I mean what attracts Blundell into Scaramucci is his viola playing and him as an artist she's a dancer skirmishes of. And that is what attracts him to her you know this Bolero that we hear in the middle this is music of seduction this is the most sultry music that somebody is that right and it's basically seducing Blundell and and I think that this is where the comparisons are I would view as contemporaneous review has made these comparisons between Skaar emissions the baby as well let's hear that music. Without the. Music from Act one of Sibelius is setting of the pantomime Scaramucci played on that recording by the Gothenburg symphony with namely you have a conducting Radio 3 new generation think Kelly abroad is still with me live that music. Which we hear in the Barbican before the interval both written in 1913 it's a time when he's going through something of a crisis he's had a health scare he's approaching 50 feels music is somehow going past him in the hands of people like Shamberg It's a tough time for him it really really is and I think and in scar Miche we see 2 very different responses Sabaidee are really experimenting and this is why I think the atom music like Star mission is so important for space because it demands stylistic flexibility in the want to tar we see a kind of reinterpretation of the Calabar this seminal nationalist text that he turned to for her brother it perhaps is before Lemminkainen you want to try as we've just heard this is a far more ambiguous take on the national epic we scaring me she's looking outside of Phil and towards this widespread European fascination with the trope of the woman who don't slice off to death if we think Rite of Spring also premiered in 1913 has a similar character and this is what a lot of European figures were looking at. Different Skews Well and contemporaneous reviewers said this is so cosmopolitan this is extraordinary the music sounds Italian German French I can't place it and I think this is why the outer music is so important for somebody else in this crisis period for him stylistically and also as a human being as well as he approaches his 50th birthday. Of course we're talking about the color of the Finnish national epic and in his early years in the 89 to his superiors had been very attached to Latin writing music that was very connected with the Finnish myths and with as they saw it the Finnish nationalists he became if you like a Finnish nationalist or he became rather a sort of figurehead for the Finnish nationalists whether he wanted his or not what's his relationship with nationalism by the time we get to this difficult period far more ambivalent by the time we reach this period so Bayliss is trying to move away from the image of himself as a national composer he doesn't want to be seen as a nationalist curiosity and I think this is why he sort of re situating himself with pieces like lawn atop where he can take a slightly more distance stance from his very nationalist pieces in the early eighty's ninety's like and of course this then escalates in 1917 after the Finnish civil war which I mean this really shakes about us as world in the same way that it did for everybody in Finland and so we continue to see Sabaidee as moving away from this position of nationalism as people continue to entrench it whether he likes it or not that is how he is received as a nationalist composer was he affected by the civil war that happened really deeply Yes Sebelius was stuck in between a rock and a hard place in the Civil War He was a Swedish speaking fan he supported the white side who eventually won the war but I think the figure Civil War was horrific 80000 people were killed in that war and this is a tiny population to have 80000 people killed divided families are American to who were here in the 2nd half he was actually a prisoner of war in the Finnish civil war and it really shook the entire population and had tremors throughout the rest of the early 1900. We end the program with his 2nd symphony written in the early 1991 this is a piece that the Finnish nationalists leapt on as being in. Very profoundly and and yet to me and I think to others it already feels like Sebelius and he wrote Will thought about some of it in Italy anyway it feels again more cosmopolitan more reaching out towards the 2nd symphony does still have more of the youthful Sebelius and then when we move into the 3rd Symphony what a difference from the 2nd Symphony and this is really where he starts his experimentation where he'll culminate with his faith leading through to the symphonies like the 7th but this one movement walk. Will play you out with more from Scaramucci will go back to Sebelius the musical storyteller thank you very much thank you for having me they have brought Radio 3 new generation think Electra Oxford University. Music from Act 2 barely says score for the pantomime Scaramucci performed on that recording by the government bugs in from the orchestra conducted by name a year of the well tonight's conductor Zachary or conductor other we c.s.o. Of course an architect of this a Bally symphony cycle which ends tonight has joined me in the broadcast box at the back of the Barbican Sakura welcome my 1st question to you has to be scary movie seems to need an outing any plans to do it I have to confess I don't really actually know the piece that well incidental music possibility is a whole kind of very interesting world of its own and of course the tragedy of it is partly that it works so well with the theatre but it's actually written as a kind of background to a play. This is the last installment of the symphony cycle tinge with sadness yes how can it be like this I mean it's gone so quickly and even though our cycle has been spread out in time it's gone so quickly why did you decide against the chronological approach Well the cardinal approach is one very strong possibility but I think on the other hand symphonies also exist in a kind of non-chronological universe they talk to each other in a very interesting way so I think coupling for instance number 2 and 7 like today's is actually a rarity and a very very good thing to do I think and of course you don't get the development in the same way but then you get other things you get sort of cross meanings and interesting contexts because in each of the symphonies there are embryos of ideas for the next one I feel and we've heard the 7th we've heard us a perilous finally arrives with his making everything into a single unified whole with these tiny cells and we now go to the the 2nd which is a far larger beast as it were how would you describe the the 2nd Symphony which we're ending our journey with well it's a piece that has been described almost to the point of breaking up quite with many many different connotations and but for me it's just almost like a philosophical piece I don't think it has anything to do with the fight for independence or suchlike or any external things actually I think it's a musical argument which of course has very strong characters but one should treat it as a musical argument 1st and foremost. As you say that's a pretty well known piece or a Mary come to on the other hand is not a well known name in this country was the son of a composer described as the Finnish Johann Strauss but very different from his dad Oscar we're going to hear this amazing piece actual by I exclaimed in one of the rehearsals when we did the piece yesterday that this sounds like what Cheney is has to play like me it's more like something that was very strongly in the air in the 1920 s. And I checked for his yes there's a kind of very strong narrative element to the sort of part and it's got this kind of a very small color as well in the orchestral interlude I mean he was regarded Mary Cantor was a as a modern ist in the twenty's in Finland and not appreciated really did that come to him later in life but I mean he's one of those tragic composers that wrote an absolute must because his opera your heart in the same year actually in the same year. But which he never heard it was only performed very very shortly after his death in a concert performance and then it's had some outings like maybe it would always 15 years between. It's a really really strong piece and I think it's still perhaps the best finish opera ever in the spire by everybody talked about being in the shadow of Sibelius in those days and I think maybe going to more than anyone else felt that shadow felt that he's on style wasn't wasn't going to break through and that he was going to have to simplify is that which he did later and which wasn't so successful He maybe got some more recognition but he sort of lost his personal voice a little bit and that's of course very tragic Well it's a marvelous piece and we're about to hear its u.k. Premiere 2nd reality should go and prepare and storm up to the podium to conduct it thank you very much for being here thank you. Second we are my chief conductor of the b.b.c. Symphony Orchestra and welcome back to the Barbican concert hall for me. Martin Hurley for the 2nd part of this final installment of the Sabella symphony cycle undertaken by the B.B.C.'s 00 with the sack are in 10 minutes or so they round off their journey with surveillances glorious 2nd symphony but 1st the soprano come see rejoins the orchestra for as I said the u.k. Premiere of our American toes echo Mary counter vision and daring made him Finland's 1st modernist composer someone rejected in his own time as we were saying by the Finnish musical establishment he wrote echo in the same year 922 as the masterpiece that sucker was talking about the opera you Mary canto was almost 30 at the time at that point his style was a combination of expressionist and in Precious chromatic harmony and Finnish folk music but it simply wasn't understood the text of echo by Mary counters near contemporary vi cocoa skin you and me tells the ancient Greek myth that nymph echoes fruitless attempts to get the attention of Narcissus who only has eyes for himself that he can't set to soprano a bundle of challenges with the freedom of his vocal writing which underpins with a virtuous whose music is always shooting off in different directions the poem begins all the night have I danced alone and have called my love to the dance to the tune of the nightingale and the pipes of pan. Consing suck your remote rejoining the b.b.c. Symphony Orchestra the balcony stay to thank you from your art America. Oh I. Was a little. Bit in that it was. A little was. The. a. Little ones. Oh. 'd 'd Oh. Was. Oh. 6 look. who 2. It's a little. Thank you. So America thank you applause very full Baba come over with the. Machine a beautiful piece for the 1st interview since. I've been posting teacher I have a condo building like Solanum. Well now the b.b.c. Symphony Orchestra. And their Sabella symphony cycle here in the concert hall with his 2nd symphony late in $1800.00 a year after the premiere of his 1st met a man called. Until that in just an anonymous fan of his music made many suggestions among them that Sebelius should write another symphony visit it's a difference that his suggestions were all sooner or later acted on as a measure of what competition would come to mean as a bonus he was indefatigable both in his moral support and in the crucial role of unpaid self-appointed fundraiser on the one after its money a ride from him which allowed the Sebelius family to would to Italy. But after a month or so see the Apollo seventy's inspiration behind to dry up he was worried about his debts about the Russians continuing cultural colonization of the Grand Duchy of Finland whose very identity sink in danger then said his daughter Ruth contracted typhus the disease which claimed their baby kissed it the previous year so babies couldn't cope with blinding centricity took off for Rome he wandered around art galleries and listened to choir singing music by his favorite Palestrina that's of aliases relationship with his wife Anna found it was entirely due to her being prepared to put up with so much because of her unswerving belief in her husband's genius eventually with Ruth recovery Sebelius slunk back to his family they made their way. One of the pieces he'd been working on in Italy was a tone poem based on the dog legend and music from that made its way into the 2nd Symphony which somehow came out of all this after its 1st performance finished nationalists was stirred by the way the great tune emerges from the storm at the end of the sketch so taking it is an expression of their desire for Finland free from Russian control with much of his music based on the Finnish national epic it's not surprising everything's a barely stroke to be seen this way though he always denied any such basis for the 2nd symphony as a friend wrote it doesn't matter what Sibelius intentions were the important thing is the feelings are so intense and powerful they can be interpreted in this way what emerges from this striking atmosphere gains its power from a wider area than the composer himself is aware of. Here once again comes Saturday are about. The b.b.c. Symphony Orchestra and so Bayliss is 2nd. A well. I. Was. The Lead. Us.