The Swan of Tuonela was completed in 1895 and subsequently revised for its publication in 1901. This magical (and immensely popular) essay comprises the second of Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Legends, a set of four tone poems all inspired by the Kalevala. Its origins, however, lie in an earlier project also based on the Finnish epic poem: this was the opera The Building of the Boat, for which The Swan of Tuonela was intended to serve as a prelude (and which, in 1894, the young composer finally abandoned after being overwhelmed by a Munich performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde). Sibelius himself prefaced the score with this brief description: ‘Tuonela, the land of death, the hell of Finnish mythology, is surrounded by a large river with black waters and a rapid current, on which the Swan of Tuonela floats majestically, singing.’ Against a harmonically progressive, magical backdrop of muted strings (most unforgettably so in those upward-shifting A minor triads at the very start), it is given to a mournful cor anglais to sing the Swan’s unearthly refrain. Eventually, the texture is disturbed by gently insistent string pizzicati, and suddenly, with a breathtaking switch into C major, an all-too-brief flash of sunlight floods across the icy waters (glinting harp arpeggios and distant, ineffably poignant horn calls). Thereafter, the strings intone a songful threnody, the mist rolls across the landscape once again, and the Swan continues on its unruffled journey, lofty and serene. In August 1913, Sibelius accepted an invitation from the wealthy American patrons of the arts Carl Stoeckel and Ellen Battell-Stoeckel to visit the United States. Stoeckel had inaugurated a music festival in Norfolk, Connecticut, and many prestigious contemporary figures (Dvořák, Bruch and Saint-Saëns among them) had already enjoyed his handsome hospitality. 4
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