224. Sounds of Home

Work for chorus by Sibelius performed by Boston Children’s Chorus on March 28, 2015 and work for string quartet by Tchaikovsky performed by Borromeo String Quartet on November 13, 2005.Sibelius: This is My SongTchaikovsky: String Quartet No. 1Our podcast begins with a brief, touching selection from the Boston Children’s Chorus: a setting of Sibelius’s theme from Finlandia, translated in English as “This is My Song.” The peaceful hymn tune was originally a part of Sibelius’s patriotic symphonic poem, but it was so beloved that it was excerpted, combined with lyrics by a Finnish poet, and became the de facto national hymn of Sibelius’s home country. After that sweet beginning, we leap into a string quartet that also has ties to its composer’s homeland: Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 1. It is in the second and third movements that we especially hear the influence of the composer’s Russian homeland. The theme in the middle movement is a folk song. Stories vary: some say that Tchaikovsky learned it from a carpenter, others that he heard his sister’s gardener humming it on a visit to Ukraine. Several years later, Tchaikovsky looked back on a performance of the piece with pride, writing, “Never in my life have I felt so flattered…as when Leo Tolstoy, sitting next to me, heard my Andante with tears coursing down his cheeks.” We’ll hear the piece played with great feeling by the Borromeo Quartet.