Bartók and Sibelius were contemporaries, but their compositions are quite different, as they both worked with their own tools and from their own experiences. And what arose in them?

Sibelius opened the way for Finnish music into the international music scene during the 92 years of his life. He experienced the last great bloom of Romanticism, the melancholy of passing and the pioneering ways of new music. Bartók was already born in turmoil. He discovered a whole new world in folk music while his country was in the midst of the storms of history. Valse triste and the Violin Concerto draw from the northern melancholy, while Bartók's music presents its own contradictory relationship with the world around him by coming closer to folk tales. What do these works convey to you?