Our new Year Quiz 2017 is named
‘In the Footsteps of Sibelius’
and features an assortment of locations with Sibelian links.
Click this link to try the quiz – and good luck!
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
to all members and friends of Sibelius One.
Birthday concert at Ainola
A concert of Sibelius’s music for violin and piano will be held at Sibelius’s home, Ainola, at 6 pm on Thursday 8 December 2016.
The performers will be Kaisa Porra-Hänninen, violin, and Kari Hänninen, piano.
The concert will be introduced by the performers, and Kaisa Porra-Hänninen will also discuss Sibelius’s own Serafin violin, on which she will be playing.
Tickets €22.50 / €11.50 (children aged 4−16) from Lippu.fi (click here)
The Ainola plot will be open on Sibelius’s birthday from 8 am until 6 pm. Members of the public can visit the composer’s grave and see Ainola’s garden in winter.
The museum shop and Café Aulis will be open from 10 am until 6 pm.
Students from the Keskisen Uudenmaan Musiikkiopisto in Järvenpää will play and sing at Café Aulis from 4 pm–5 pm that day.
Osmo Vänskä completes second Sibelius cycle
Osmo Vänskä has completed his second Sibelius symphony cycle on disc with the release of Symphonies Nos 3, 6 and 7.
He conducts the Minnesota Orchestra, of which he has been principal conductor since 2003, and this is the first of the team’s recordings to have been recorded after the end of the orchestra’s extended lock-out.
Previous releases in the series, Symphonies Nos 2 and 5 on BIS-1986, and Nos 1 and 4 on BIS-1996, have been acclaimed by critics, the latter disc winning a Grammy award in 2014.
Vänskä’s previous Sibelius cycle, with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, was hailed in the magazine Gramophone as ‘the finest survey of the past three decades’.
The disc (BIS-2006), recorded in May/June 2015 in surround sound and released as a hybrid SACD, will be released internationally in August 2016 to coincide with the orchestra’s European tour, with performances in Lahti, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
A recording of Kullervo by the same musicians together with the YL Male Voice Choir and soloists Lilli Paasikivi and Tommi Hakala, made at live performances in Minnesota in February, is scheduled for release at the end of 2016.
End of the Kamu era in Lahti
Okko Kamu’s five-year period as principal conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra is coming to an end this spring with three concerts at the Sibelius Hall.
On Thursday 10th March Kamu’s 70th birthday concert will feature Jeajoon Ryu’s cello concerto (soloist: Arto Noras) and Bruckner’s Third Symphony. Further information and link to buy tickets: click here.
On Thursday 14th April he will conduct a programme of Zinoviev, Glazunov and Prokofief. Maaria Leino will be the soloist in Glazunov’s Violin Concerto. Further information and link to buy tickets: click here.
Finally, on Thursday 12th May, Kamu will conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with soloists Camilla Nylund, soprano, Tuija Knihtilä, mezzo-soprano, Mika Pohjonen, tenor and Mika Kares, bass, and the Chorus Cathedralis Aboensis. Further information and link to buy tickets: click here.
Kamu will be succeeded by Dima Slobodeniouk, who will conduct this year’s International Sibelius Festival in September. Sibelius One members who wish to join our group booking for the festival are asked to register their interest now. Click here for more information.
Pohjola’s Daughter article
To mark Kalevala Day (Finnish Culture Day, 28 February), we have added a new text about Sibelius’s symphonic fantasia Pohjola’s Daughter to our library of articles about Sibelius’s music. Click here for the article.
To access this and other articles in the same series, please use your membership log-in. To become a member, click here.
Discography update
A preliminary version of Ian Maxwell’s Sibelius discography (as an Excel document) is now available for download – for more information and the download link, please click here.
Lahti International Sibelius Festival 2016
The Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s 17th International Sibelius Festival will take place at the Sibelius Hall in Lahti on 8th–11th September 2016. The three orchestral concerts will be conducted by the orchestra’s chief conductor and the festival’s new artistic director, Dima Slobodeniouk.
Sibelius One will be organizing a group booking for the 2016 Sibelius Festival, for hotel accommodation and concert tickets. We should like to invite members to make provisional bookings now for this year’s festival. Please send your details to
gm@sibeliusone.com. In particular it is important to let us know which nights
you will require a hotel room.
Further updates and information are available on our ‘Visit Finland’ page (click here).
Programmes for the 2016 Sibelius Festival’s orchestral concerts
Thursday 8th September 2016, 19.00 / Sibelius Hall
Pohjola’s Daughter
Tapiola
Symphony No. 1
Friday 9th September 2016, 19.00 / Sibelius Hall
The Dryad
The Tempest, concert suite
Symphony No. 4
Saturday 10th September 2016, 17.00 / Sibelius Hall
Pan and Echo
Pelléas et Mélisande
Symphony No. 3
Chamber Concerts
Saturday 10th September 2016, 12.30 / Kalevi Aho Hall
Sibelius’s Piano Music
Johannes Piirto, piano
Sunday 11th September 2016, 11.00 / Sibelius Hall
Kamus Quartet
Dima Slobodeniouk (photo: © Marco Borggreve)
‘For the orchestral concerts at the 2016 Sibelius Festival I have chosen works from different periods that, I feel, speak to each other’, says Dima Slobodeniouk. ‘One of the programmes consists of works that Sibelius composed in successive years: Pelléas et Mélisande in 1905, Pan and Echo in 1906 and the Third Symphony in 1907. I feel that there is such a clear thread that unites them all that I could not fail to play them in proximity to each other. In the other orchestral programmes I have aimed both for contrasts and for musical affinities.’
LPO/Vänskä Sibelius cycle
The London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä will perform a complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies at London’s Royal Festival Hall in October 2016.
The music will be spread over four concerts what will also include the Karelia Suite and The Oceanides and important British music for string soloists and orchestra.
Music director of the Minnesota Orchestra since 2003, Osmo Vänskä is widely recognized for his compelling interpretations of the standard, contemporary and Nordic repertoires . He gained distinction with his landmark Sibelius cycle with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra – described by Gramophone as ‘the finest survey of the past three decades’, and in 2014 his Minnesota recording of Sibelius’s First and Fourth Symphonies won a Grammy award.
Wednesday 19 October, 7.30 pm: Pride and passion
Sibelius: Karelia Suite
Britten: Violin Concerto (Simone Lamsma, violin)
Sibelius: Symphony No. 1
Friday 21 October, 7.30 pm: Triumph and tranquillity
Sibelius: Symphony No. 3
Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending (Yu-Chien Tseng, violin)
Sibelius: Symphony No. 2
Wednesday 26 October, 7.30 pm: Darkness and light
Elgar: Cello Concerto (Raphael Wallfisch, cello)
Sibelius: Symphony No. 4
Sibelius: Symphony No. 5
Friday 28 October, 7.30 pm: Towards the horizon
Sibelius: The Oceanides
Walton: Violin Concerto (Tasmin Little, violin)
Sibelius: Symphony No. 6
Sibelius: Symphony No. 7
Sibelius: The Oceanides
Walton: Violin Concerto (Tasmin Little, violin)
Sibelius: Symphony No. 6
Sibelius: Symphony No. 7
Ticket prices for each concert range from £10 to £65 and can be ordered by clicking the links above.
January 2016 Magazine
The latest edition of Sibelius One’s magazine has been released and is being posted out to subscribers. This issue focuses in particular on Sibelius’s relationship with the violin.
Articles included in the magazine are as follows:
- ‘Many congratulate me on getting to play on a Stainer’ – Sibelius’s Violin Andrew Barnett
- The Eleventh International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition Leon Chia
- ‘Playing to him was so natural that I didn’t really realize that it could have been considered as something very special.’ An Interview with Satu Jalas
- ‘How could anyone play that and not want to discover more?’ Five violinists discuss Sibelius’s music for their instrument
- Burmester, Nováček and Sibelius’s Violin Concerto Timo Virtanen
- The Sixth International Jean Sibelius Conference Hilary Finch
- The Sixth Sibelius Lecture An extract from the novel ‘The Seven Symphonies: A Finnish Murder Mystery’ by Simon Boswell
- Widespread they stand… Peter Frankland discusses ‘Tapiola’