Jean Sibelius -- Symphony No. 2 -- Score

At the time of writing his Second Symphony, Jean Sibelius was already a renowned cultural figure in his native Finland. Baron Axel Carpelan raised funds for Sibelius to spend the autumn and winter of 1901 in Italy, where he commenced work on the symphony, completing it back home the following year. It was premiered in 1902, then was revised slightly in 1903 into its final form.

The public reaction to the symphony was overwhelmingly positive, with listeners hearing it as another expression of Finnish patriotism and desire for independence, particularly in the final movement, with the lyrical ascending theme dueling with the ostinato and finally breaking out into a grand, glorious restatement at the very end. Some called it the "Symphony of Independence", similar to his previous work, the much more overt "Finlandia". Whether Sibelius actually intended this reaction, or wrote with this theme in mind, is unclear; he gave the work no title or program notes. He did, however, state that "My second symphony is a confession of the soul."


0:00 First Movement
10:02 Second Movement
24:08 Third Movement
30:12 Fourth Movement


Score sourced through the International Music Score Library Project / Petrucci Music Library: https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.2,...)

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