This tone poem by Sibelius from 1895, tells the tale of a mystical swan, running around the island of the dead. Saint-Saëns famously sets The Swan, from his Carnival of the Animals, as a solo cello, ...

At 28, Jean Sibelius had big plans. The Finnish composer had begun venturing into writing orchestral music just a few years before, and he already had operatic aspirations. “The Swan of Tuonela” is ...

He was one of the great musical visionaries of the 20th century and his symphonies revitalised a tradition that was close to collapsing under its own expressive weight. There are few of us who haven’t ...

Stephen Johnson is joined by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Petri Sakari to explore one of Sibelius' most gripping tone poems, Night Ride and Sunrise, and The Swan of Tuonela, the most ...

Aside from his Valse Triste and his ringing tone-poem Finlandia, Jean Sibelius’ most popular composition is a little descriptive piece called The Swan of Tuonela. Written in 1893, The Swan of Tuonela ...

A lost early version of Jean Sibelius’s tone poem, The Swan of Tuonela, has been reconstructed by Dr Sarah Moynihan. It was performed for the first time by MUMS Chamber Orchestra at the Martin Harris ...

Learning to read Finnish in school enabled Jean Sibelius to appreciate the great Finnish epic known as the Kalevala. The stories stayed with him from his youth, and as an adult he wrote a set of four ...