Jean Sibelius

Two films exploring the life and music of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius by celebrated filmmaker Christopher Nupen. At the peak of his career Sibelius was hailed by almost every leading critic and composer in England as the greatest symphonist of the twentieth century. The Americans went even further, with a survey by the New York Philharmonic Society in 1935 showing his music to be more popular with their concert-goers than that of any other composer in the history of music - a degree of recognition in his own lifetime unequalled in Western music. The words are provided almost entirely by Sibelius himself and his wife Aino and the music by Vladimir Ashkenazy, Elisabeth Soderstrom and Boris Belkin with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.