Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Thomas Adès

In 1912, Edward Elgar and Jean Sibelius, Elgar’s junior by eight years, were participants at the Birmingham Music Festival, where the two successful composers conducted their own works: Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, and Elgar’s The Music Makers, a cantata for choir, orchestra, and alto solo. We can only speculate about whether they met.

However, we can say with certainty that Edward Elgar was 50 years, six months, and one day old when his First Symphony was premiered in Manchester in 1908. According to Elgar, the highly personal work is filled with “wide experience of human life with a great charity (love) and a massive hope in the future”.

What Jean Sibelius had to say about his tone poem En Saga was similarly enigmatic: “En Saga is one of my most profound works, in psychological meaning. I could even say that it contains all my youth.  It is the expression of a state of mind. I had undergone a number of painful experiences at the time, and in no other work have I revealed myself so completely. It is for this reason that I find all literary explanations quite alien.”

Sibelius certainly is not alien to the conductor and composer Thomas Adès. In the 2025/2026 season, he joined the Czech Philharmonic in presenting his composition Air - Homage to Sibelius. “Sibelius occupies a completely unique position—defined both geographically and historically. He stands on the edge of the classical musical tradition and something that moves into the unknown, into a kind of open landscape that began to unfold after him. He always appears as a person on the frontier of new territory: constantly discovering, constantly moving forward. In his music, you can literally see him thinking—what to do with a given motif, where to take it. And each time, he offers a solution that is immensely satisfying.”