But the effect is even more subtle than simply shifting through the gears: the final appearance of the trombone theme, whose three-fold appearances are the symphonyвЂ™s most obvious landmark, is achieved by a musical time-warp. And even better than that, listen to how Sibelius manages it in the Seventh Symphony, speeding up from an adagio to an allegro, and slowing down from presto to adagio. Imagine a quaver ticking along at a certain speed, which then becomes the crotchet or the minim of the new tempo. In fact, the Seventh Symphony crystallises a conspectus of a compositional technique that later composers like Elliott Carter, George Benjamin, and countless others, would employ: soвЂ“called вЂќmetric modulationвЂќ, in which you use a common unit of musical time to elide from one speed to another. The new piece (which evolved from a original multi-movement plan) fuses elements of slow movement, scherzo, of sonata-form, of rondo, and of grand symphonic coda in the same span of music, and it does so while attempting to elide the transitions from one to the other so that the effect of the whole piece is miraculously seamless instead of episodic. But those already astonishing achievements are mere upbeats for what Sibelius is doing in the Seventh. In the Fifth Symphony, he applies a similar logic to its first movement, which is really a welding together of two movement types, an opening allegro and a scherzo. The finale of the Third is a вЂњcrystallisation of chaosвЂќ, as he called it, that fuses scherzo and finale into a new kind of symphonic motion, music that generates a momentum that is simultaneously monumental, massive and irresistibly rapid. The journey towards the SeventhвЂ™s SymphonyвЂ™s compression, its atomic collisions of different kinds of symphonic movement in a single, hyper-concentrated span, has its first precedent in SibeliusвЂ™s Third Symphony. ItвЂ™s tribute to the huge emotional power of SibeliusвЂ™s music that it produces such wildly divergent interpretations вЂ“ but I want to focus a little more on the scream rather than the triumph of what Thomas AdГЁs, like Rattle, has called the вЂњpainfully inconclusiveвЂќ ending of this symphony.Д«ut letвЂ™s first think about the unique ambition of what Sibelius is attempting here. For many other commentators and conductors, the end of this symphony is the вЂњgrandest celebration of C major there ever wasвЂќ, or a вЂњtriumphantly abruptвЂ™ ending. It was first performed in 1924, when it was called вЂњSymphonic FantasyвЂќ only when the piece was published a year later did Sibelius call it a symphony, the last he would give to the world). SibeliusвЂ™s 7th Symphony is more conventionally thought of as a vindication of a new kind of symphonic form (it plays for 22 minutes or so in a continuous single movement) and a reclamation of the affirmatory power of tonal possibility.

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