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.
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.
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.’
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
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:
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:
Please send the information to Ian Maxwell (click here).
A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all members and friends of Sibelius One!
Here is a selection of memories from the Sibelius 150th anniversary year.
(Click to enlarge photos)
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.
