When Sibelius turned 50, a hundred years ago, the Finnish media printed a picture of the great man with his mother (right).
But they cropped his sister, Linda, out of the original shot (left).
Linda was the family secret. Brother Christian became an eminent psychiatrist, head of Helsinki’s mental hospital. As teenagers, the siblings played in a trio.
Linda got religious and went to Tunisia as a missionary. She came home showing signs of mental instability. Christian locked her up in his hospital, where she died in an isolation cell in 1932. Jean Sibelius once said: ‘I see my future destiny in her’. He was terrified of going mad.
Vesa Siren, Sibelius’s most recent biographer, adds: Important article. Linda Sibelius was well enough to visit Christian’s and composer’s homes from time to time so the isolation was not complete. Composer, his wife and daughters also wrote letters to aunt Linda, who often responded.
She was mentioned in early articles and biographies, also by composer himself, though the mentioning of illness could have been impolite when she was alive and able to keep correspondence and leave hospital from time to time. Linda is also not brushed off from, say, photograph in Ekman’s biograpy (1935), and her illness was, of course, mentioned already by Tawaststjerna.
I once met the widow of an amateur violinist who, as he began to play the overture at a festival concert, saw another violinist slip into the vacant seat beside him and start playing from his score.
He nearly fell off his chair when he recognised his stand partner. It was Fritz Kreisler, and he was down to play the next piece – the world premiere, if I’m not mistaken, of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. ‘Don’t mind me,’ whispered Kreisler. ‘I hate being stuck alone in green room.’
(We all know that feeling.)
Last night, something similar happened in New Orleans.
Alban Gerhardt was down to play the Dvorak cello concerto in the second half, after the Louisiana Philharmonic got through Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen Suite.
As the concert began, Alban took up a chair in the back of the celli beside LPO cellist Jeanne Jaubert, who happened to be sitting alone. Second half, he played a great Dvorak.
Way to go.
Gerhardt later with asst. principal cellist Daniel Lelchuk.
Dialogue from the Michael Fassbender biopic:
Jobs (Michael Fassbender) to Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen): ‘I play the orchestra. And you’re a good musician. You sit right there. You’re the best in your row.’
The scene was shot in the orchestra pit of the San Francisco opera house.
I have spent the past three days in Winnipeg, where the symphony orchestra is playing the local premiere of Mahler 10 (Deryck Cooke score) and I’ve been filling in the background.
Winnipeg is a sub-Arctic city of 650,000 in the middle of Canada. Many of the people I meet, especially musicians, were born and educated in Winnipeg and never want to live anywhere else. Winnipeg has been designated Canada’s cultural capital and has a rich and varied offering. It even has a contemporary music festival.
The orchestra never tours and no other symphony orchestra ever plays in Winnipeg. As a consequence, I heard a modern rarity – an ensemble with a sound and character uniquely its own. Most of the principal players – viola, flute, bassoon, tuba, several others – could take a seat in any world-class orchestra. The music director, Alexander Mickelthwate, has lived here for ten years and they want to keep him.
Both Mahler 10 performances were intense and engaging. Every twist and turn in the score was fresh and surprising to my ears, in part (I suspected) because the orchestra is not trying to sound like any other. Hearing the orchestra in Winnipeg was an escape from enforced homogeneity.
Berthold Goldschmidt, who premiered the Cooke Mahler 10, once told me that as a young man he could travel from Bochum to Bremen and hear a completely different, authentic Beethoven sound, such was the character of orchestras in the age before mass travel and recording.
That’s what I heard in Winnipeg: an orchestra with roots and personality. Long may it last.
Meet Dr. Meria Carstarphen, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools. She’s the fun-loving person who has cut 18 teaching posts at the Atlanta Public Schools Music Programs, eliminating music from many children’s lives.
Now witness the respect Meria shows for a musical instrument.
A survey of UK arts salaries shows average pay hovering just under £30,000 and women earning at least ten percent less across the board than men.
And that’s despite women being in charge at the South Bank, ENO and other key institutions. The pay gap is apparently growing. How do boards justify that?
