Image: The city of Turku in 1920, the year after Sibelius conducted the first performance of his cantata ‘Jordens sång’ there. City photo: Public Domain. Sibelius image by Santeri Levas / Finnish Museum of Photography. Colourized.
The ongoing Sibelius discography project has received another update. To download the latest version (free) click this link: Sibelius_Discography_20211220. For more information on the discography project and recent releases click here to visit our Discography & Recordings page.
A Sibelius Commemorative Concert will take place in Melbourne, Australia, to celebrate the 156th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
This free event will feature an all-Sibelius programme arranged and performed by the Inventi Ensemble and soprano Jessica Carrascalão Heard.
The event is arranged by the Melbourne radio station 3MBS and is sponsored by Geoff Hayes, a member of Sibelius One.
It will take place on Wednesday 8 December 2021 at 11:15am (for an 11:30am start) at the Good Shepherd Chapel, 1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia
Programme:
Arioso, Op. 3
Suite mignonne, Op. 98a
Luonnotar, Op. 70
Concert duration: 30mins
To reserve a seat, please e-mail subscriptions@3mbs.org.au or call 9416 1035. Places are strictly limited. Book early to avoid disappointment.
All guests are required to be fully vaccinated. Please ensure you have your certificate for verification at the Chapel entrance. Face masks must be worn indoors at all times.
Source: 3MBS. Photo credits: Boroondara Arts (Inventi Ensemble); Cameron Jamieson (Jessica Carrascalão Heard)
John Davis, President of Sibelius One, passed away on 27 October at the age of 92.
John was interested in Sibelius since the early 1940s, when his father took him into a music shop in Bristol bought him his first record – a 78 of movements from the Karelia Suite – just at the time that news was coming through of the Russian invasion of the Karelian Isthmus. He was heavily involved with the Torbay Recorded Music Society for over half a century and co-ordinated large music groups travelling in the UK and internationally.
John’s first ‘live’ concert experience was watching Sir Henry Wood conduct Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony in the Pump Rooms in Bath in the early part of the war. His parents were both musicians, his mother being a former LRAM piano tutor (her pièce de résistance was the Sibelius Romance in D flat major – his initiation into the piano world of Finland’s greatest composer) and his father a church organist. After the family moved from London to the Bristol area during the war, John’s father went around various churches repairing and tuning organs, and at this time John himself developed a keen love for and interest in this instrument. Right from his earliest samplings of classical music on disc, John was an avid fan of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski.
As well as being devoted to music, John enjoyed a distinguished career in the Royal Navy and as a driving test examiner, conducting over 32,000 tests.
After moving to South Devon, he joined the Torbay Gramophone Society (later to become the Recorded Music Society) in 1958 and soon became embroiled in its management. This led him to present programmes nationwide with subjects including Sibelius, Stokowski and music for orchestra and organ. In 1970 he was a founder of the Torbay Musical Weekends, held at the sumptuous Palace Hotel in Torquay; in this context he worked with guest presenters of the highest calibre including Sir Georg Solti and Sir David Willcocks.
In the 1960s he started co-ordinating groups to attend ‘live’ concerts across this country, particularly in Birmingham, Exeter and London. A trip to Prague to hear the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra play Má vlast by Smetana was the start of a whole series of group musical trips to Europe and the USSR.
From 2001 onwards he was a regular attendee at the Lahti Sibelius Festival, and in 2006 he also visited the Sibelius Festival on the island of Korpo. He sponsored organ pipes in both Symphony Hall in Birmingham and the Sibelius Hall in Lahti, and was privileged to attend the inauguration of the organ in the Sibelius Hall. He became President of Sibelius One when the organization was founded in 2014 and held that position for the rest of his life.
John’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for music were as legendary as they were infectious, and his good humour and kindness will be fondly remembered by all those lucky enough to meet him. He is survived by his wife Christine, daughter Julia, son Edward and four grandchildren.
Luukas Hiltunen by Sibelius’s grave at Ainola
The arrangement by Luukas Hiltunen of the Scène d’amour from Sibelius’s ballet-pantomime Scaramouche has been played at a concert at the composer’s home, Ainola. The performance, on 26 July 2021, was given by the Kamus String Quartet (Terhi Paldanius and Jukka Untamala, violins; Jussi Tuhkanen, viola; Petja Kainulainen, cello) as part of ‘Meidän Festivaali’ (‘Our Festival’).
Scaramouche is one of the longest and most unusual of Sibelius’s large-scale scores, and the composer himself made piano arrangements of two passages (Danse élégiaque and Scène d’amour) and a violin/piano version of the Scène d’amour.
Luukas Hiltunen has previously made arrangements for symphony orchestra of Sibelius’s organ works Intrada and Surusoitto, and his First Symphony (2019–20) reflects his familiarity with Sibelius’s style of writing music for orchestra. The symphony has been published: the score and performance materials are now available through Universal Edition (UE) online shop: https://www.universaledition.com/luukas-hiltunen-7879/works/symphony-no-1-30501. Luukas Hiltunen is currently working on his String Quartet No. 1, ‘A tale of two lovers’. The subtitle alludes to the programmatic content of the work, loosely inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The work will play for around 40 minutes and performance materials will be available both in printed and digital forms through Universal Edition AG.
Previous performances of the Scaramouche arrangement have taken place on 23 March 2018 at the Church of the Cross, Lahti, Finland (Lahti Conservatory String Quartet), 21 July 2019 at the Sibelius Hall, Lahti (string quartet from Orkester Norden) and 1 May 2021 at Korundi House of Culture, Rovaniemi (Lapland Chamber Orchestra).
Members of the Kamus Quartet at Ainola’s Cafe Aulis
For more information about Scaramouche click here to read or download Eija Kurki’s in-depth article.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/luukashiltunenmusician
Instagram: luukas_hiltunen_musician
Music publisher (Scène d’amour): Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (product link: click here)
Photos © Luukas Hiltunen
A new book on Sibelius by Daniel M. Grimley, Jean Sibelius: Life, Music, Silence, has just been published by Reaktion Books.
Daniel Grimley is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford and Douglas Algar tutorial fellow at Merton College. His books include Delius and the Sound of Place (2018).
To quote the publisher’s website: ‘Few composers have enjoyed such critical acclaim – or longevity – as Jean Sibelius, who died in 1957 aged 91. Always more than simply a Finnish national figure, an “apparition from the woods” as he ironically described himself, Sibelius’s life spanned turbulent and tumultuous events, and his work is central to the story of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music. This book situates Sibelius within a rich interdisciplinary environment, paying attention to his relationship with architecture, literature, politics and the visual arts. Drawing on the latest developments in Sibelius research, it is intended as an accessible and rewarding introduction for the general reader, and also offers a fresh and provocative interpretation for those more familiar with his music.’
The ongoing Sibelius discography project has received another update. To download the latest version (free) click this link: Sibelius_ Discography_20210907. For more information on the discography project and recent releases click here to visit our Discography & Recordings page.
Owing to the ongoing coronavirus situation Sibelius One’s Annual General Meeting in 2021 will once again take the form of a Zoom Cloud meeting. To enable more members to take part, we have changed the date and time of this meeting. The new timing is given below:
Equivalent times around the world:
Sydney, Australia: Sun, 19 Sep 2021 at 22:00 AEST
Singapore, Singapore: Sun, 19 Sep 2021 at 20:00 SGT
Helsinki, Finland: Sun, 19 Sep 2021 at 15:00 EEST
Amsterdam, Netherlands: Sun, 19 Sep 2021 at 14:00 CEST
London, United Kingdom: Sun, 19 Sep 2021 at 13:00 BST
New York, USA: Sun, 19 Sep 2021 at 08:00 EDT
Los Angeles, USA: Sun, 19 Sep 2021 at 05:00 PDT
All members are welcome to join the meeting – click here for link to the Zoom meeting, or to view or download the agenda
We look forward to seeing you on 19 September!
The 2021 Sibelius Festival in Lahti begins today, 2 September 2021, with music by Timo Alakotila and Sibelius’s Kullervo, with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dalia Stasevska.
Audience numbers are restricted by Covid-19 regulations and the pandemic has prevented Sibelius One from organizing its usual group visit to the festival.
Click here for a list of the festival’s programmes.
The main concerts can, however, be seen online at the orchestra’s website/ClassicLive or on YouTube.
Link to the orchestra’s website/ClassicLive: https://www.sinfonialahti.fi/classiclive/
Link to the orchestra’s YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/user/lahtisymphony/featured
Image from Lahti Symphony Orchestra website
Newly released in Breitkopf & Härtel’s JSW (Jean Sibelius Werke) series is the eagerly awaited critical edition of Sibelius’s music for piano trio, with the first publication of a number of large-scale, important and attractive works from Sibelius’s youth. The volume is edited by Anna Pulkkis and is prepared in collaboration with Folke Gräsbeck, who participated in the first recordings of all these works.
Included in the volume:
Allegro in D major, JS 27 (first version and revised version – fragment)
Andantino in G minor, JS 43
Menuetto in F major, JS 126
Trio for two violins and piano, JS 205
Trio in A minor, JS 206
Trio in A minor (‘Hafträsk Trio’), JS 207 (including 2 versions of first movement)
Trio in C major (‘Lovisa Trio”), JS 208
Trio in D major (‘Korpo Trio’), JS 209
Breitkopf & Härtel’s website: ‘Even before enrolling at the Helsinki Music Institute in 1885, Jean Sibelius had already composed several piano trios mainly intended for ensemble playing within his family and with his circle of friends. These works also gave young “Janne” the opportunity to try his compositional ideas out in practice. His last known work in this scoring originated in 1888. The volume of Jean Sibelius Works, edited by Anna Pulkkis, contains all piano trios, including the Hafträsk Trio, the Korpo Trio and Lovisa Trio… Already on display here are the melodic ingenuity and powerful expressive depth of Sibelius’s later works.’
Click here to order via Breitkopf & Härtel’s website:
Catalogue number: SON 631
Works for Piano Trio, edited by Anna Pulkkis
Price: €252.00
Series edited by the National Library of Finland and the Sibelius Society of Finland
The Sibelius family trio – Jean, Linda and Christian