Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra: Tales and Symphonies

Helsinki Music Centre, Concert Hall
Wed 26.8.2026  19:00

Duration: approx. 1h 45min, interval

Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra
Susanna Mälkki, conductor

Maurice Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye Suite
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105 

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92

Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant
Petit Poucet
Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes
Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête
Le jardin féerique

Maurice Ravel enjoyed visiting his friends, the Godebski couple, and their children Mimi and Jean at the family’s country house. In her memoirs, Mimi recalls that Ravel felt at home in the children’s company, playing all kinds of pranks and telling fairy tales.

Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose, 1908) was originally intended as a piano duet for Mimi and Jean Godebski. However, the honor of giving the premiere performance went to 6-year-old Jeanne Leleu and 10-year-old Geneviève Durony a couple of years later.

Ravel arranged the work into a ballet and orchestral suite in 1911. For the ballet, he changed the order of the movements and added dance numbers and interludes. The orchestral suite is based on this ballet version. “The memories of childhood fairy tales led me to simplify my style and refine my means of expression,” Ravel wrote.

Familiar characters such as Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, and Beauty and the Beast adventure in the fairy-tale world of Mother Goose. The overall impression of the music is airy and restrained. Word-painting and musical depictions are used sparingly considering the subject matter. Examples of these include the birds pecking at breadcrumbs in the second movement and the beast conversing with Beauty.

The work opens with a depiction of the sleeping Princess Rose. The fairy-tale scenes culminate in the handsome prince’s kiss, which awakens the princess from her hundred-year slumber.

The genesis of the Seventh Symphony is shrouded in mystery. However, based on sketchbooks, Sibelius is known to have worked on his last three symphonies simultaneously. Sibelius wrote in 1918: “Symphony VII. Joy of life and vitality, appassionato in between. Three movements – the last a ‘Hellenic rondo'”.

Later, the plan for the work changed into a single movement. The piece was completed in March 1924, and Sibelius conducted the premiere in Stockholm without Aino, who no longer accompanied him to concerts out of fear that her husband would take too much liquid courage before the performance. Reviews were positive, but Sibelius expected even more. “How little all these people suspect what I have given in my new work,” he wrote.

Sibelius had also worked on the piece during his concert trip to Rome in the spring of 1923. The vividly present antiquity may have inspired the composer, as the epithets “Apollonian” and “Hellenic” are often associated with this symphony. The noble, serene solemnity of C major combines with occasional chromatic and modal colors. The appearance of the grand trombone theme is one of the most magnificent moments in all symphony literature.

The Seventh Symphony continues the line of absolute music in Sibelius’s output, and the work’s title does not indicate programmatism or a specific theme. The symphony’s form is determined naturally according to the possibilities offered by the material, almost as a byproduct of the compositional process. The result is structures that can be called revolutionary. Sibelius’s status as one of western music’s most significant symphonists rests upon this quality.

Poco sostenuto – Vivace
Allegretto
Presto – Assai meno presto
Allegro con brio

Almost all commentaries regarding Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony share an emphasis on its rhythmic aspect. The work’s march-like, dotted rhythms have been widely noted. Other characterizations of the symphony have included “wild” and “energetic”.

The symphony contains no actual slow movement at all; even the slowest is marked allegretto. The poco sostenuto of the introduction also allows for a variety of tempo interpretations. The tensions of the first movement’s opening section scale passages are resolved only at the very end of the movement. The relationship between the Allegretto and the funeral march of the Eroica is obvious. The keys of the third movement—F major in the scherzo and D major in the trio—link to the symphony’s main key via the note A. The distant echo of the first movement contained in the fast-paced finale closes the overall form.

Beethoven’s work on the Seventh Symphony began in August 1811 in Teplitz. Financial worries, worsening deafness, and unfortunate love affairs darkened the atmosphere. Despite these difficulties, Beethoven succeeded in pressing fresh ideas and ecstatic kinetic energy into the symphony.

The work was premiered at a benefit concert in Vienna on December 8, 1813. It was a great success with the audience, and the second movement of the symphony was performed a second time as an encore.

Texts: Pekka Miettinen

Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra »
Susanna Mälkki »

The Pekka Räisänen Fund supports the educational partnership with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for this concert.