Symphony no. 2 in D major, op. 43

Sibelius sketched the first ideas for this symphony in February 1901 at a mountain villa near Rapallo, where he had gone to work in isolation, and conducted the premiere in Helsinki on 8 March 1902. After three sold-out performances he revised the score, and the second version was first heard in Stockholm on 10 November 1903 under Armas Järnefelt. Finnish audiences read the heroic outer movements as a political statement and called it the Symphony of Independence; Sibelius rejected the label, insisting his symphonies were absolute music and writing later that this one was a confession of the soul. The stay in Italy was possible thanks to the financial support of his friend Baron Axel Carpelan. In 1930 the Finnish government paid the Columbia Gramophone Company 50,000 markka to have the first two symphonies recorded, an early instance of a state financing recordings of its national music for circulation abroad; the discs are kept in the National Library of Finland.