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.

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.’

http://www.sinfonialahti.fi

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:

• ‘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’ 

Information about previous issues: click here.