SIBELIUS HAD HIS SALARY RAISED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 354, 5 April 1946, Page 19

SIBELIUS HAD HIS SALARY RAISED

was available during the war years, mainly because the great composer was isolated in Finland. But out of his recent 80th birthday celebrations has come the information that the Finnish Government staged a concert of his work in Helsinki’s largest hall. And, to Sibelius’s home, a neat wooden hut above Lake Tuusulan, journeyed many visitors. Among them, states News Review, were two Government officials, who brought news that his State pension had been increased from £300 to £500, and presented him with an illuminated address signed by 18 leading . Russian composers. The Finnish Government also issued a commeniorative stamp. The BBC shared in the celebrations. A Sibelius birthday concert packed the Albert Hall. Conducted by Basic Cameron, a personal friend of the composer, the BBC Symphony Orchestra played the third and fifth symphonies and the symphonic poem Tapiola, regarded in some quarters as Sibelius’s greatest work. To-day Jean Julius Christian Sibelius little news of Sibelius

is himself a minor symphony in black and white. His suits are either funereal or glistening white; his big fleshy face is deathly pale; his head is hairless and smooth as polished ivory, and his physical resemblance to Winston Churchill is accentuated by his fat cigars. . Though of peasant stock Sibelius has always been comfortably off. He studied at Helsinki, Berlin and Vienna. The first World War brought him gloom; his compositions were pitched in the minor key. His reputation outside his native Finland grows but slowly. Italy and Germany

still barely acknowledge his existence; France is decidedly cool. America is more enthusiastic, but England has taken him to its soul. "| Think Music" When the Russo-Finnish war broke out in 1940, Sibelius received innumerable offers of hospitality from all over the world. He refused them all. World War II affected him little, but in 1944 the manuscripts of all his compositions were destroyed when his Leipzig publisher’s office was bombed. Critics have long been divided on the subject of his orchestration, but Sibelius argues: "It makes me impatient when people talk of orchestration. I don’t think orchestration. I think music. I hear my music always’in terms of certain musical sonorities." Beethoven he adores; Grieg and Tchaikovski he loves. But he has never liked Wagner. His main current task is the completion of his eighth symphony, but he has worked on it so long that it has become almost mythical. Two movements are believed to be completed, but he will not talk about them. Current affairs, prophetic utterances about the shape of things to come, browsing among his collection of books in five languages, and music are his main pursuits,