Performed by the NZSO National Youth Orchestra conducted by James Judd
Strings of the National Youth Orchestra Photo: Latitude Creative
Sibelius drew extensively from Finnish mythology in many of his works, but this is the only time he was inspired by Greek myth to create a depiction of the ocean in its many moods.
According to the Greek writer Hesiod, the Oceanides were the nymphs, "dispersed far and wide" who "serve the earth and the deep waters".
The work has often been compared to Debussy’s La Mer, premiered 12 years earlier, but as Marshall Walker points out, Sibelius’s “waters are colder, more purely elemental. Where Debussy divides his evocation into three distinct moods, Sibelius gives us a unified continuity of change.”
Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Town Hall, 6 July 2019
Producer: Tim Dodd; Engineers: Rangi Powick, Adrian Hollay
