Of the four Sibelius manuscripts auctioned at Sotheby’s on 24 May 2016, two found buyers.
Pohjola’s Daughter (Lot 149) was sold for £221,000 (including buyer’s premium).
Pages from The Captive Queen (Lot 152) were sold for £32,500 (including buyer’s premium).
The piano transcription of Pelléas et Mélisande (Lot 151) and pages from the Violin Concerto (Lot 150) remained unsold.
The latest release in Breitkopf & Härtel’s JSW critical edition of Sibelius’s music contains two orchestral rarities: the Overture in E major, JS 145, and Ballettscen, JS 163. These are Sibelius’s first two purely orchestral works, dating from his study year in Vienna (1890–91).
This volume is edited by Tuija Wicklund. Among the new information revealed in the volume is that the ending of Ballettscen was changed: the one in the autograph manuscript differs from the one in the score made by the copyist Ernst Röllig.
The catalogue number is SON 627 and the volume costs €141.88.
More information (including downloadable introduction in English and German) and orders: https://www.breitkopf.com/work/6198/16575
See also: review of the JSW Scènes historiques (SON 625): click here
The Worcestershire Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kevin Slade will perform a programme of Sibelius (Finlandia; Symphony No. 5) and Elgar (Violin Concerto – soloist Martin Cropper) at St Martin’s Church, London Road, Worcester at 7.30 pm on Saturday 21 May 2016.
The orchestra, which was founded over 100 years ago with the help of Edward Elgar, gave its first concert in the Public Hall, Worcester, on 26 April 1906, with Ivor Atkins conducting more than 100 players. Elgar assisted in drawing up the programme, and conducted occasionally in performances of his own works. His daughter Carice played the violin in the orchestra for many years. Today Keith Slade is the Worcestershire Symphony Orchestra’s dynamic young conductor. He studied the clarinet at the Royal Northern College of Music and is a former BBC Young Musician of the Year Woodwind Finalist.
Tickets are available via the orchestra’s website (click here): Adults £12 / Concessions £10 / Children £5 (one free with each adult ticket).
The programmes feature also music by Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Performers at this years’s festival include:
Satu Jalas, violin
Sebastian Silén, violin
Domenico Ermirio, cello
Hedvig Paulig, soprano
Folke Gräsbeck, piano & artistic director
Provisional concert programmes are as follows:
Friday 22 July 2016 at 9 pm / Korpo gård
Busoni: Andante mit Variationen und Scherzo for piano trio
Sibelius: Florestan, suite for piano
Songs: Skogsrået; Likhet; Jubal
King Christian II, incidental music
Malinconia for cello & piano
Armas Järnefelt: Berceuse
Saturday 23 July 2016 at 6 pm / Korpo gård
Busoni: Kultaselle Variations
J.S. Bach/Busoni: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
Sibelius: Étude for solo violin
Suite in E major for violin & piano
Sonata in F major for violin & piano
Sibelius’s granddaughter Satu Jalas will also make a presentation about her grandfather.
Sunday 24 July 2016 at 4 pm / Korpo gård
Sibelius: Piano Trio in A minor, ‘Hafträsk’
Rondino, Romance, Tanz-Idylle, Humoresque & Valse for violin & piano
Armas Järnefelt: Songs: Titania; Du (Karl Asplund); Leivo; Viel’ ois virttä tieossani
Sibelius: Songs: Jag kysser dig och ledsnar ej; Löjet var utan hem [World Première Performance]; Sommarnatt; Vem styrde hit din väg?
Danses champêtres Nos 1–3 for violin and piano
There will also be the traditional annual ceremony, with music, speeches and flowers, at the Sibelius statue in Korpo village, at 1 pm on Saturday 23 July, with festival organizer Petri Kirkkomäki and Erkki Korhonen from the Sibelius Birth Town Foundation, Hämeenlinna.
On Sunday 24 July at 11 am there will be a screening of Douglas Sivén’s documantary film ‘Sibelius i Korpo’.
Further information will be posted when available.
The second Sibelius Festival – Golfo del Tigullio e Riviera (artistic director: Federico Ermirio) will take place in October 2016. The festival will include a range of concerts, with artists including Eva Alkula (kantele), Eva Wymola (mezzo-soprano), Essi Kiiski (violin), Eduardo Andrade (piano), Domenico Ermirio (cello), Andrea Carcano (piano) and Folke Gräsbeck (piano). There will also be a screening of Timo Koivusalo’s 2003 film Sibelius starring Martti Suosalo and Miina Turunen.
Visit the Festival’s website for further information.
The third Sibelius Festival – Golfo del Tigullio e Riviera (October 2017) will host Pocket Ballet, a project born some years ago, dedicated – as the title suggests – to the creation of events involving a small number of dancers and musicians. The first of these, Isofromatem, was premièred in Italy in 2014, introducing new works by four living composers from Italy, Greece, Israel and Finland. For 2017 a new ballet project, with a duration of less then one hour, inspired by the Finnish epic poem Kalevala, will be realized by choreographer Peter Larsen. The music will be entrusted to an instrumental trio: accordion, viola and kantele. All Finnish composers born after 31 December 1981 are eligible to submit scores for consideration.
For further information please click the link below to download a pdf document
Pocket Ballet – Kalevala – Call for Scores 2017
Several major Sibelius manuscripts are being sold at auction by Sotheby’s, London, on 24 May 2016.
It is rare for major Sibelius manuscripts to be sold, and even rarer for a number of important manuscripts to be offered at the same time. All of the works in question are among the pieces that were published by Robert Lienau in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Foremost among these is the autograph manuscript of Pohjola’s Daughter; Sotheby’s remark that ‘no manuscript of this importance and calibre has appeared on the market for over ten years’. Also on sale are the primary sources for the final version of the Violin Concerto (although most of the autograph score is lost) and the complete piano transcription of the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande. Finally there is a set of eight autograph fragments, plus a score containing other revisions, pertaining to the male choir version of the patriotic cantata The Captive Queen.
The Pelléas manuscript is of particular interest because it contains two previously unknown piano transcriptions of movements that were omitted from the published piano version of the suite.
The estimated price range for these items ranges from £30,000–50,000 (The Captive Queen) to £200,000–300,000 (Pohjola’s Daughter).
Links to Sotheby’s auction pages:
Pohjola’s Daughter (Lot 149) — — Violin Concerto (Lot 150)
Pelléas et Mélisande (Lot 151) — — The Captive Queen (Lot 152)
On Wednesday 4th May 2016 at 6.30 pm the Embassy of Finland in London is organizing a concert of Finnish music by Duo Teos (Kreeta-Julia Heikkilä, violin and Roope Gröndahl, piano) followed by a buffet reception at the Finnish Ambassador’s Residence in London.
Members of Sibelius One are invited to attend this concert but the number of tickets available is strictly limited and they will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Click here to find out how to apply for tickets.
The ongoing Sibelius discography project has been updated.
To download the latest version click here: Sibelius_Discography_20160421.
For more information on the discography project and recent releases see our Discography & Recordings page.
A disc of songs and folk song arrangements by Martin Wegelius has been published by Fuga (FUGA-9410).
Wegelius – who founded the Helsinki Music Institute (forerunner of today’s Sibelius Academy) in 1882, was Sibelius’s teacher there from 1885 until 1889. Wegelius was a versatile musician – a pianist, composer, conductor and critic – who had studied in Vienna, Leipzig and Munich and who would direct the Music Institute until his death. He was to prove a good friend to Sibelius and take a kindly, even paternal interest in his development. Wegelius was a capable administrator who could take the credit for many international musicians (including Busoni) coming to Helsinki. He was also an obsessive Wagnerian, with a particular fondness for Die Meistersinger; he wrote a 323-page biography of Wagner and also established the first Finnish Wagner Society. His music has hitherto been very sparsely represented on disc.
The new recording features two of Finland’s foremost young singers, the soprano Hedwig Paulig and the baritone Tuomas Lehtinen, accompanied on the piano by Gustav Djupsjöbacka. Some of the items also feature a choral part, here performed by the Spira Ensemble.
