Programme Notes

Back to Concert Info
Printer Friendly Version

Sibelius: Humoresque No. 2 in D Major, Op. 87, No. 2

Sibelius composed his Humoresques in 1917. The two works run approximately 7 minutes in performance, and are scored for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, timpani, and orchestral strings.

An expert violinist as well as a distinguished composer, Sibelius considered a career as a violin soloist. He reluctantly abandoned the idea during his early twenties, in order to concentrate on composing. The decision continued to haunt him. As late as 1915, he wrote in his diary that he “dreamt himself 12 years old and a virtuoso.”

The music he wrote for the violin displays his complete understanding of the instrument. In addition to the magnificent and well-loved Violin Concerto (1904), he created several dozen shorter works for violin, primarily pairing it with the piano. This festival offers the rare and exceedingly welcome opportunity to hear many of those pieces for which he created orchestral accompaniments. In chronological order of composition, the festival will present the two Serenades, on April 21 and 22; Cantique and Devotion, on April 17; and two of the six Humoresques, at these opening concerts.

Sibelius composed the two sets of Humoresques, Op. 87 and 89, in 1917 and 1918. They may contain ideas for a second violin concerto that he had planned a few years earlier but decided not to write. He revised all six of them in 1923, during the period in which he composed Symphony No. 6.

The title, Humoresque, implies a light character. It applies to these works, with their rapid shifts in mood, only to a limited degree. Sibelius described them as conveying “the anguish of existence, fitfully lit by the sun.” That he was able to communicate such a wide range of emotions in such brief compositions is one mark of his genius.

Programme Note by Don Anderson

© Copyright 2010 Toronto Symphony Orchestra