Symphony No.5
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Sibelius: 15 facts about the great composer
11. Symphony No.5
By the time Sibelius came to premiere his Symphony No.5 in 1915, he had come round to Mahler’s maxim that the ‘symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything,’ he said. The fifth symphony came smack bang in the middle of one of the most exciting musical decades ever – which saw Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and The Firebird and the modernist experiments of Varese.
