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Crossings, Creations, and Immersions

BBC SO Total Immersion: Sibelius the Storyteller

Black and white photo of Jean Sibelius

The last word: an evening of music and words inspired by Finnish legend and landscape, before Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Sibelius’s final great masterpiece Tapiola.  

Sibelius’s Tapiola sings of the endless northern forests: primal, elemental, ‘brooding savage dreams’.  And after its premiere in 1926, the composer fell silent - as if he had no more stories to tell. At the end of a day of total immersion in the world of Sibelius the storyteller, Sakari Oramo and soprano Anu Komsi take us on a final journey into the forests of the far north.

They begin, though, in a blaze of light: the life-affirming dawn that concludes Night Ride and Sunrise. Komsi is the soloist in three more musical legends, including the astonishing Luonnotar – a Finnish creation-myth, retold in music of primal grandeur. And then, at the end, comes Tapiola – one of music’s timeless mysteries, as urgent now as the day it was conceived. 

This performance will finish at approximately 8.45pm

Produced by the BBC Symphony Orchestra

Digital programme

Hall