Conservative orchestral forces produce a clarity of texture and Sibelius himself, later in life, said he preferred a small string section to emphasise the transparency of the orchestration. The symphony is in three movements, with the last movement in effect a scherzo and finale merged into one. It was in the Third Symphony that he achieved a clean break from those other dominant styles. Like Kodály and Bartók in Hungary, Janáček in Bohemia and Vaughan Williams in England, Sibelius found himself released from the shackles of the likes of Wagner and Tchaikovsky through using his native landscape, mythology and folk music as inspiration. Sibelius, alongside many other composers from the smaller musical nations, was looking at this time to move away from the stylistic influences of the Germanic/French/Russian schools.
In hindsight we can see that the Third is in fact the first truly ‘Sibelian’ of his symphonies and many of the innovations in harmonic language, melodic development and formal concision are in evidence here for the first time. Very few commentators saw the piece as a new departure, but rather as a falling off of inspiration after the popular Second Symphony. A public that had recently experienced the hysterical excesses of Strauss’ Salome were rather underwhelmed by this modest work. When the Third Symphony was first performed in 1907, its restraint, often referred to as ‘classical’, was deeply out of tune with the overblown romanticism/expressionism of its time. However, over time commentators have increasingly recognised the extraordinary strengths in both works and have identified that they are less concerned with pleasing audiences and more concerned with finding a new means of symphonic expression.
“Everything was so strange,” was how Finish critic Heikki Klemetti responded after the first performance of the Fourth and both works have remained the least performed in concert of the cycle. Both works confounded their initial audiences. Sibelius wrote to a friend: “After hearing my Third Symphony Rimsky-Korsakov shook his head and said: ‘Why don’t you do it the usual way you will see that the audience can neither follow nor understand this’.” Such comments summarised much of the critical reaction to this symphony and also to his Fourth.
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