Major update to important Italian Sibelius book

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A new version of ‘Jean Sibelius’ by the eminent Italian Sibelius scholar Ferruccio Tammaro has been published by Libreria Musicale Italiana (Lim editrice srl; in Italian).

The original book (508 pages), the first Italian monograph about Sibelius, was issued by Eri (Turin) in 1984. The new version is considerably longer (850 pages), taking into account the much more extensive information now available and, above all, reflecting the fact that great artists like Sibelius always benefit from new opportunities for reflection and investigation.

After musical studies with Franco Donatoni (composition) and Azio Corghi (piano), Ferruccio Tammaro studied under Massimo Mila at Turin University, later becoming professor of history of modern and contemporary music at the same university. He has participated in numerous seminars and has contributed more than 70 items about Scandinavian and Finnish composers to DEUMM (Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti). His special interest in the symphonic genre has resulted in essays about the music of Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich, with the publication of the first book in Italian devoted to the latter (Le sinfonie di Šostakovič, Turin 1988). In addition, Ferruccio Tammaro has written books about the eighteenth-century symphony from Sammartini to Beethoven and about Tchaikovsky’s symphonies.

The publisher’s notes accompanying the book point out that Sibelius left us a legacy that still challenges the listener today. He was an artist always who was animated by a clear and strong inner temperament who in his old age, after seeing his nation finally become a truly independent nation, decided progressively to isolate himself so as not to have to breathe the foul haze that was then poisoning a large part of the European continent. Sibelius  managed to position himself as a national musician without resorting to the dialect of folk songs and dances, creating works that are completely independent of fashion and clichés. His relationship with nature, represented for instance by the flight of migratory birds, gave his music its lifeblood and energy.

ISBN: 9788855431897. Language: Italian. Price: €48.00

Click here for publisher’s website or to order the book.

Unknown song by Sibelius found

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A previously unknown song, believed to be by Sibelius, has come to light. With the title Venelaulu (Boat Song), and also known as ‘Teij-oo’, it has an anonymous text (most likely the composer’s own adaptation of a traditional poem) about berry pickers working the night shift, loading the berries they have picked onto boats. Daylight has come and they want their harvest to be counted up so that they can go home.

The original handwritten material for this song was found on a postcard concealed between pages of a travel guide to Jamaica in Ainola’s library. It is assumed that Sibelius acquired both the book and inspiration from the song on his trip to the USA in 1914, hence the provisional dating of the song to that year.

Opening bars of ‘Venelaulu’ (without text):

Experts from Sibelius One have seen the material and have pointed out that descending intervals of a fourth or a fifth are characteristic of the composer (here the opening motif contains a descending fourth), and that the ornamentation in bar 6 of the extract quoted above bears a resemblance to Sibelius’s violin writing in some of his wartime pieces for violin and piano; these factors would suggest that the piece is indeed authentic.

Other commentators have taken a more sceptical attitude. The singer Harry B comments: ‘The idea that Sibelius crossed the Atlantic and then wrote this Boat Song is, frankly, bananas.’

Harry B is 96.

 

 

The Tempest, arranged for chamber ensemble

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Miranda – The Tempest (J.W. Waterhouse, 1916). Public domain

Luukas Hiltunen has been commissioned to arrange for chamber music ensemble selected movements from Sibelius’s The Tempest (1925–26) for the Ruovesi Summer Music Festival:

1. The Oak Tree, from Op. 109 No. 2
2. The Harvesters, from Op. 109 No. 2
3. Berceuse, from Op. 109,No. 2
4. Chorus of the Winds, Op. 109 No. 3
5. Dance of the Nymphs, from Op. 109 No. 3
6. Prospero, from Op. 109 No. 3
7. Miranda, from Op. 109 No. 3
8. The Naiads, from Op. 109 No. 3

These movements are ideally suited for performance by a smaller-scale instrumental forces. The suite will be published by Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen, which has already issued Hiltunen’s arrangement for string quartet of Sibelius’s Scène d’amour (WH33255). Wilhelm Hansen has also published Jouni Kaipainen’s reduced version of Sibelius’s incidental music to The Tempest (2008, WH32914).

The new arrangements will be premiered at a concert on Sunday 2 July 2023 at 4 pm at Sofia Magdalena Church, Ruovesi, Finland. The performers will be Anna Aminoff, flute; Eeva Mäenluoma, clarinet; Kasmir Uusitupa, Otto Antikainen and Tami Pohjola, violins; Aida Hadzajlic and Riina Piirilä, violas; Beata Antikainen and Sirja Nironen, cellos; Jarkko Uimonen, double bass and Jan Michiels, piano. The concert also features songs by Sibelius (Johanna Isokoski, soprano) and music by Debussy and Josef Krogulski.
Tickets are on sale from Friday 10 March 2023 via http://www.lippu.fi.
More details (in Finnish): http://www.musiikkiaruovesi.fi/


Luukas Hiltunen

Contact information, Luukas Hiltunen:
UE (Universal Edition AG) Composer Profile: https://www.universaledition.com/luukas-hiltunen-7879
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/luukashiltunenmusician/
Instagram: @luukas_hiltunen_composer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luukas-hiltunen-composer/

New and recent releases from Breitkopf & Härtel

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There have been further releases in the JSW critical edition of Sibelius’s complete works from Breitkopf & Härtel.

In the main edition the most recent releases are:

String Quartets in E flat major, A minor, B flat major and D minor (Voces intimae)

Sibelius’s œuvre contains four complete string quartets. The first three – in E flat major (JS 184, 1885), A minor (JS 183, 1889), B flat major (Op. 4, 1890) – date from his youth and study years. They remained unprinted until long after his death, and the String Quartet in E flat major was also not performed in public. By contrast the D minor ‘Voces intimae’ Quartet was published in 1909 and has long been acknowledged as one of his masterpieces. This volume also includes an incomplete early version of the B flat major Quartet’s first movement.

Edited by Pekka Helasvuo and Tuija Wicklund
SON 634 (€326.00) / 328 pages / ISMN: 979-0-004-80369-1

The Dryad, Op. 45 No. 1; Music zu einer Scène (1904); Dance Intermezzo, Op. 45 No. 2 (including also early version); Pohjola’s Daughter, Op. 49; Pan and Echo, Op. 53

This volume contains five orchestral works from the period 1904–10, the largest and best-known of which is Pohjola’s Daughter. In addition, a fragment illustrating the unrealized plan of a symphonic poem called Luonnotar, which Sibelius reworked into Pohjola’s Daughter, appears as a facsimile. Musik zu einer Scène is now published for the first time.

Review in preparation

Edited by Timo Virtanen
SON 636 (€233.00) / 244 pages / ISMN: 979-0-004-80391-2

Also released separately, based on the scores already issued in the complete edition (edited by Anna Pulkkis and Folke Gräsbeck), are the two major piano trios from 1886–87, the ‘Hafträsk’ Trio and ‘Korpo’ Trio. These important scores are published for the first time in the JSW edition.
‘Hafträsk’ Trio in A minor, JS 207: EB 9448 (€39.90)
‘Korpo’ Trio in D major, JS 209: EB 9449 (€39.90)

     

A new paperback study score of the Lemminkäinen Suite has also been released, based on the Urtext (edited by Tuija Wicklund) previously issued in hardback (2013).
Lemminkäinen: PB 5576 (€39.90)

All of Sibelius’s symphonies except the Fifth have already appeared in the JSW edition. The Fifth is currently being prepared, edited by the project’s editor-in-chief Timo Virtanen.

 

 

Sixth Symphony – 100 years

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Sibelius’s Sixth Symphony celebrates its centenary on 19 February 2023.

To celebrate the centenary, there will be a special concert in Turku, Finland, at which Leif Segerstam will conduct the symphony and Suite champêtre with the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra at the Turku Concert Hall at 4pm on Saturday 18 February, followed by an event at the Sibelius Museum in Turku on Sunday 19 February.

Suite champêtre was premiered together with the Sixth Symphony on 19 February 1923, by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer.

Along with the Saturday concert, there will be a lecture by Hannu Salmi, professor of cultural history (in Finnish). Tickets for the concert cost from €17.50 to €27.50.

The original hand-written score of the Sixth Symphony was graciously donated to Sibelius Museum by the composer himself in the autumn of 1955. To commemorate its centenary, this score will be made available to the public for a limited time, both physically as well as in the form of a digitalisation that can be browsed freely.

On Sunday 19 February the Sibelius Museum will be open from 11 am until 4 pm, with free admission. From 12 noon until 1.15 pm there will be a programme of events:
Folke Gräsbeck will perform the composer’s piano version of Suite champêtre
Andrew Barnett will give a talk on interpretations and recordings of the Sixth Symphony (in Swedish)
Timo Virtanen, editor-in-chief of the JSW critical edition, will talk about the Sixth Symphony and Sibelius in 1923 (in Finnish).
From 1.15 pm onwards the digital score will be available for browsing

Information about the Saturday concert: click here

Information about the event at the Sibelius Museum: click here

 

 

 

 

Jean Sibelius – Of ice and fire, by Alessandro Zignani

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Jean Sibelius – Dei ghiacci e del fuoco. Vita e musica (Jean Sibelius – Of ice and fire. Life and music) by Alessandro Zignani, a new book in Italian, has been published by Zecchini Editore.

Despite accusations of post-romantic epigonism, Sibelius’s music celebrates the eternity of a primeval nature where the cycles of the seasons are renewed, transcended rather than denied, in an acceptance of Fate that smacks of stoic serenity. In Sibelius, European civilisation confronts its own origins in the energies that shape the ice, the Arctic winds capable of fixing time in perennial harmonies, crystals eternally fixed in stone. His originality is subtle, difficult to navigate, and just as complex is his musical style made of resonances emanating from the basalts of the earth, tensions far removed from the  rationality of European civilisation. In an age of transition such as ours, Sibelius returns with his enigmas to loom as a disturbing prophet. Isolating himself among lakes and forests, in his last thirty years he found the path to a silence that his music, perhaps, had evoked from the very beginning: a salvific return to nature, a benign divinity.

The prolific writer, musicologist, playwright and linguist Alessandro Zignani was born in Rimini in 1961. He is a founder member and on the board of directors of the Sibelius Society Italia.

ISBN: 978-88-6540-397-6. VIII+256 pages; 17x24cm. Price: €30.00.
Purchase link – click here: https://www.zecchini.com/jean-sibelius-dei-ghiacci-e-del-fuoco-vita-e-musica

A Performance Guide to the Songs of Jean Sibelius

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Kathleen Roland-Silverstein

A Performance Guide to the Songs of Jean Sibelius, by Kathleen Roland-Silverstein, is to be published by Oxford University Press (anticipated release date: late 2024). The book is intended to be an aid to performers of all of Sibelius’s songs, with phonetic and word-for-word translations, historical information about his poets and singers, a guide to Finnish and Finland-Swedish lyric diction and performance recommendations for each song opus.

Kathleen Roland-Silverstein is also the author of Romanser: 25 Swedish Art Songs with Guide to Swedish Lyric Diction (Gehrmans Musikförlag, 2013) and is the music reviewer for the Journal of Singing (National Association of Teachers of Singing). In addition, she is a highly regarded concert soloist and specialist in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, and has been a featured singer with many music festivals, including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Britten-Pears Institute and the Tanglewood Music Festival. International performances include concerts in Sweden, Finland, Vietnam, Cambodia and Germany. She is a member of the faculty at Syracuse University in New York, at the Setnor School of Music.

Sibelius’s early Piano Quartet to be performed in USA

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The Varro Quartet (photo: © Ching Ching Yap)

The Varro Quartet was formed by four young musicians from Georgia: Didi Stone (violin), Lucas Nyman (violin), Richard Wang (cello) and Erin Li (Piano) for the Franklin Pond Chamber Music ‘Fall into Spring’ Pro­gram. Franklin Pond Chamber Music is an organization that provides training for young musicians year-round to learn and perform chamber music.

Having secured permission from the Sibelius family, the Varro Quartet will perform Sibelius’s early and rarely heard Piano Quartet (1884) for the final concert of the Franklin Pond Chamber Music Program on 30 April 2023 – the first performance of the work in the USA. It may also be played this piece in the context of the Franklin Pond Chamber Music Com­pe­tition in May 2023.

A complete performance of the Piano Quartet by these performers can meanwhile be found on YouTube:

Quartet in D minor, JS 157, for two violins, cello and piano (1884)
I. Andante molto – Allegro moderato [11’51]: https://youtu.be/mSDkvs3KIzY
II. Adagio [6’49]: https://youtu.be/OHjJx82iDtA
III. Menuetto [4’43]: https://youtu.be/Jas1Es4UK2o
IV. Grave – Rondo. Vivacissimo [8’40]: https://youtu.be/3Dfi_5A9u9A

Further information about the Varro Quartet and this project can be found in the current issue of the Sibelius One magazine.

Sibelius Concert at York University

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Fenella Humphreys and Joseph Tong recording
music by Sibelius in 2020. Photo: © Dave Rowell

Fenella Humphreys and Joseph Tong will include a number of works by Sibelius in their recital at York University on Wednesday 22 February 2023 at 7.30pm.

Sibelius   Five Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 81
Cheryl Frances-Hoad   Sonatina
Sibelius   Four Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 115
Rautavaara   Summer Thoughts
Sibelius   Danses champêtres, Op. 106
Ravel   Sonata No. 2

Fenella Humphreys  violin
Joseph Tong  piano

Venue: Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, Campus West, University of York

Winner of the BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Award in 2018, Fenella Humphreys is admired by audiences the world over for the grace and intensity of her playing. She is joined by renowned British pianist Joseph Tong in a programme featuring some of Sibelius’s best-loved works for violin and piano. ‘Album of the Weekend’ on Scala Radio and ‘Chamber Choice’ in the March 2022 edition of BBC Music Magazine, the duo’s recent recording of these works has garnered widespread critical acclaim [click here for more information about the recording]. Alongside these charmful and inventive examples of Sibelius’ chamber music, their programme also includes Ravel’s jazz-infused Sonata in G major, Rautavaara’s romantic Summer Thoughts and the dynamic and charismatic Sonatina by former winner of the BBC Young Composer of the Year Competition Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

Click here for further information and to book tickets.