Basic tempo = Andante molto sostenuto...

In one place he writes Poco a poco meno moderato (followed by a tempo) and then Meno moderato.

I find that this idea of Meno moderato can be taken to mean either faster or slower, given the initial Andante indication. I know that traditionally the meno moderato is taken to mean faster than the Andante, but does anyone have any arguments to support the idea that it could mean slower that the initial Andante?

Well, I'm no fan of adhering to tradition for its own sake, but in this case I do find that the conventional interpretation suits the expression of the music.

You could look at two similar cases:

1) Karelia Suite, Intermezzo: Moderato - Un pochett. string. al - Meno. I can think of a good few conductors who don't make any change of tempo at all (especially British ones for some reason), but most do follow Kajanus's precedent and speed up for the middle part of the movement. Curiously, Sibelius's own piano trannscription does not change tempo; it's marked Allegro throughout.

2) Symphony No. 1, slow movement, 7 bars before M: Meno. Most conductors assume that it is faster (cf. Poco a poco meno andante a couple of pages earlier), though a few (most notably Vänskä) do slam on the brakes. In the manuscript score at the Sibelius Museum in Turku - which represents a halfway stage between the lost 1899 original and the final version of 1900 - this passage is clearly marked Meno andante (rather than just Meno) which suggests that some degree of urgency was intended; one wonders if the Meno in the published score is simply a copyist's/publisher's error that wasn't picked up in proofreading.

The Symphony No. 1 example is a good parallel.

In performance (Nov 10 in Marienbad) I indeed did push the tempo for the "Meno" sections. The definitive clue was in the orchestral parts. The second occurence of Meno moderato is followed by Poco allargando and then Tempo I, which indeed suggest slowing down from Meno moderato to Tempo I, the slower tempo.

And lo and behold, in the orchestral parts it is written Poco allargando al.......... and then Tempo I.


The source of the confusion for me is that Sibelius' initial tempo is Andante molto sostenuto, but he then writes meno moderato, not meno andante. If he had indeed written Meno andante as in your Symphony no. 1 example, there would be no case for a dual interpretation.

--- EDIT ---

Symphony No. 5 has a similar place in the first movement, leading into the 3/4 Allegro moderato.

He writes poco a poco meno moderato al... and then Allegro moderato. As the original tempo is Molto moderato, it is quite clear that he means accelerando.

Again, the confusion in my mind was created by the fact that the basic tempo in the Swan is Andante, not moderato.