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.
As part of our occasional series ‘Me and my Sibelius’, an interview with the conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste, made by Sibelius One in Cologne in December 2015, is now available.
A Sibelius discography is being compiled that will be made available via this website.
In the interests of making this discography as complete as possible, all Sibelius enthusiasts and Sibelius One members are invited to send in details of recordings in their collection and we shall add the information to what is already on file here.
At present work is in a preliminary stage. As soon as possible we shall make available a file listing those recordings already included, and alternative methods of submitting information.
In the meantime, if you would like to send details of your discs already, we would ask for as much as possible of the following information to be included:
Work title and opus/JS/HUL number
If only part of a work is performed, please specify which part(s)
The Sibelius Medal of the Sibelius Society of Finland has been awarded to Pekka Helasvuo.
The medal was presented by Lauri Tarasti, outgoing president of the Sibelius Society of Finland, at a reception in Hämeenlinna Town Hall on Saturday 5th December 2015 as part of the Sixth International Jean Sibelius Conference.
Pekka Helasvuo, Licentiate of Music, has worked as a violinist in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor and principal lecturer of orchestral and chamber music studies at the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. His subject of licentiate work was the Orchestration of the Songs by Jean Sibelius (Sibelius-Academy, Helsinki 2007). Helasvuo is currently working as an editor of the string orchestra works (Series III) for the critical edition of Jean Sibelius works (JSW).
This was the last presentation of the Sibelius Medal in its current form. A new design of medal will be used from 2016 onwards.
Three other finalists, Mayumi Kanagawa (USA), Minami Yoshida (Japan) and Nancy Zhou (USA), received a prize of € 2000 each.
The Foundation of Helsinki Conservatory of Music awarded a special prize of €3000 to Emmanuel Tjeknavorian for the best interpretation of Sibelius Violin Concerto
The City of Järvenpää awarded a special prize of €2000 to Friederike Starkloff for the best interpretation of a commissioned piece in second round. The commissioned piece was one of the award-winning pieces from the Jean Sibelius Composition Competition 2015.
The best Finnish contestant Pekko Pulakka received the special prize from Yleisradio: an invitation to make a recording for Yle.
Christel Lee will perform at the following concerts in December:
with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conductor Hannu Lintu, at the Jean Sibelius 150th Anniversary Concert in Hämeenlinna on 8th December.
with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor John Storgårds, on 10th December in Birmingham and 12th December in Dublin.
The conference will gather eminent scholars from all over the world with a wide variety of presentations on many different aspects of Sibelius’s life and music.
The presentations, which will take place in two parallel sessions throughout, will be as follows:
James Hepokoski: Early Sibelius, Primitivist-Modernism, ‘News of War’
Les Black: Dorian Departure
Aare Tool: Jean Sibelius and the Modes of Limited Transposition
Benedict Taylor: Monotonality and Scalar Modulation in Sibelius’s Tapiola
Philip Ross Bullock: Sibelius Reception in Britain, 1901–1939: Centre Periphery in the Musical Construction of the North
Laura Gray: The Tipping Point and the Rise of the Sibelius Cult in England
Helena Tyrväinen: Sibelius and the French Press in the 1920s: Initiatives, Mediators and Interpretations
Edward Clark: Sibelius and contemporary composers
Martti Laitinen: Why Kajanus went to St Petersburg
Vesa Kurkela and Olli Heikkinen: Sibelius as popular composer: Music by Sibelius in Kajanus’s popular concerts
Vesa Sirén: (topic to be determined)
Kaarina Kilpiö: Soundtrack for ‘The New Military Branch’. Jean Sibelius’s music in Finnish propaganda films during World War II
Charris Efthimiou: On the instrumentation of bass and melody line in Jean Sibelius’s early symphonic poems (1892–1894)
Pekka Helasvuo: The formation of the mode of expression of dynamic and articulation markings in the notation of Jean Sibelius
Juhani Alesaro: Analyzing Sibelius’s Satz
Barry Wiener: Dahlhaus’s Paradigm and Sibelius Reception
Ferruccio Tammaro: War-Symphonies and Peace-Symphonies: Sibelius’s Fifth
Antonin Servière: Reflecting Sibelius’s Legacy in Today’s Composer’s Mind
Nors S. Josephson: Sibelius at the Crossroads: Old Paths Leading To New Creative Departures in His Second Symphony (1901–1902)
Sakari Ylivuori: From a Bon vivant to a War Hero – The Narrative Structure of Sandels (Op. 28)
Lauri Suurpää: Unconfirmed Pastoral and Denial of Threat in the Slow Movement of Sibelius’s First Symphony
Olli Väisälä: Sibelius’s Revision of the First Movement of the Violin Concerto: Strengthening Tonal Structure while Removing Tonal Clichés
Kimmo Sarje: Sibelius and the Modern
Ron Weidberg: Sibelius and Schoenberg
Daniel Grimley: ‘I sing another song’: Sibelius, Hofmannsthal and the Subjectivities
of Jedermann
Ilkka Oramo: Sibelius’s Eighth Symphony – fact and fiction
Marc Vignal: Sibelius and Mahler
Jorma Daniel Lünenbürger: Jean Sibelius and the Cello
Tuija Wicklund: Sibelius and Böcklin
Anna Pulkkis: Sibelius’s Loulou Andantino – a Souvenir Composition with a Mystery
Timo Virtanen: Sibelius’s Sketches for the Violin Concerto
Gustav Djupsjöbacka: There are several ways of putting it
Carola Finkel: The metamorphoses of Svartsjukans nätter
Sanna Iitti: The Representation of Emotions in the songs Våren flyktar hastigt and Svarta rosor
Leah Broad: Forests, Fires, and Factories: Sibelius and the Mechanical
Eero Tarasti: How Sibelius Became Sibelius – Observations and Notes on the Emergence of His Style
Tim Howell: Jean Sibelius: Progressive or Modernist?
Tim Jackson: ‘The Company You Keep’: Recipients of the Honorary Doctorates from the 1936 Heidelberg Celebration – Sibelius and Those Honoured Alongside Him
Mart Humal: Sibelius’s Incidental Music for The Tempest: Ariel’s Five Songs as a Cycle
Veijo Murtomäki: Did Sibelius mean (some of) his miniature opuses to be taken as suites?
Andrew Barnett: The BIS Sibelius Edition
Benjamin T. Hilger: Sibelius’s Second Symphony Recordings – Tendencies of conducting within history
Among numerous live music performances that will take place during the conference is a concert by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu, featuring the winner of the Eleventh International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition. The works to be performed are Tapiola, the Violin Concerto and Symphony No. 2. To check ticket availability for the concert: click here.
On the organizing committee of the conference are Erkki Korhonen (chairman), Andrew Barnett, Anna Krohn, Veijo Murtomäki, Eero Tarasti and Timo Virtanen.