Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

@audio-b-dog 

 listened to Klaus Mikela conduct Sibelius's 5th. It was excellent. He paced the first movement faster than I am used to but it worked really well

Probably my favourite Sibelius symphony!  I was imprinted as a child by Sir Alexander Gibson's version, which is very fast.  It is very hard to forget that early imprinting!

@audio-b-dog 

I often wonder what the earliest music must have sounded like. I assume it had a strong beat and the melody from a flute or whatever was less important than it is today

The first nations people of Australia seem to have a continuous culture extending back at least 65,000 years.  Their songlines are a form of oral history documented in dance formations and storytelling.  Remarkably, they include a narrative of the end of the last major ice-age about 12,000 years ago, when sea levels rose by several hundred feet as ice sheets melted.  The shoreline swallowed large tracts of land, and allowed the Great Barrier Reef to form.  In North America the Great Lakes formed at this time from the remnant fresh water from melting glaciers. This period marked the first cultivation of plants by humans.

Most likely the earliest musical instruments go back at least 40,000 years and included two clapsticks beaten together, plus hollowed out tree branches - the didgeridoo. Ants do a good job of hollowing gum tree branches.

Didgeridoo players can breathe continuously into the instrument while 'talking' to create an incredible variety of sounds.  Clapsticks (hundreds of them) and didgeridoo featured in the opening work of the refurbished Sydney Opera House, in "Of the Earth" by Willian Barton. I cannot conceive how music for the didgeridoo can be written down!

Unfortunately archeological evidence of very early instruments may be restricted to rock paintings, as the instruments were made of perishable materials.

@audio-B-Dog

I often play Sibelius, although he doesn’t have the complexity of Beethoven, but few composers do

Most days, I'd take Sibelius. To me, many Beethoven's symphonies tend to be bombastic stop-start affairs whereas Sibelius mostly spins multiple continuous strands.

I am particularly struck by the new Decca set from the then unknown Klaus Mikela and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.  Klaus seems to have spontaneously wandered down from the wilds of Finland.  During Covid, he did nothing but rehearse the Sibelius symphonies with the Oslo orchestra.  To me, the most significant thing is that he recorded the first symphony last. This symphony has often been regarded as derivative (of Tchaikovsky) but Klaus' opening is pure Sibelius magic

Most Finnish greats have recorded cycles of Sibelius symphonies at least once...Who’d have predicted that this latest, from Klaus Mäkelä at the helm of the Oslo Philharmonic would be the most electrifying and often revelatory of them all?

Sibelius tried to create internally cohesive pieces of music.  He was horrified when Mahler said his own symphonies encompassed his whole life experience.  But then Sibelius had the Finnish addiction to the bottle, to his wife's dismay