Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in Eb Major, Op. 82 - III. Allegro molto

this begins with a timpani roll and scurrying tremolo all throughout the strings, moving in scale-wise motion all over, in Eb major.
1:15 enter the horns with the motif that everyone will remember from this movement - a sequence of fifth, sixth, and seventh, then cycling back, all with the upper note as Bb. the winds enter with a descant-like melody - it's honestly pretty hard to focus on next to the grandness of the horns, but apparently this is one of sibelius's best known melodies. for me the best moment is at 2:26, where he stretches the interval to a major ninth and cadences from a sort of minor four to the C Major.

the scurrying theme is not at all as triumphant as we expect from the opening. the violins return with a sort of fugue based on their tremolos from the beginning, with the flutes and clarinets repeating the famed melody. the violins take over, making it into a lush but somehow anxious theme full of shadow. even when the "swan call" motif comes back (what they call the horns' motif in the beginning) it is sort of muted; it avoids cadencing satisfactorily and becomes more dissonant. it seems to me as if this music teeters on wanting to overcome the darkness of these dissonances and cadence full of light, and crumbling to end in a thundering minor.

the lighter side wins out, though not with some crunch - with chromatic rising lines in the strings and brass (note the stress at 8:00 caused by the rising A Bb Bnat C C# D Eb), and especially this CRAZY chord at 8:12 when the brass come in with something completely unidentifiable - sounds like a bitonal crash. wow. even though we have reached the grand eb major by 7:50 or so, it is not a pure triumph.
the ending is really different - six chords of the usual V-I cadence, but separated by entire bars of total silence. what do you think? it's not my favorite ending, but it might rank somewhere in the top ten.