From Finland's lakes and forests
There are several new editions to mark the 150th birthday of Jean Sibelius. But the publishers are in no hurry. - Fortunately!
Today, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is known almost exclusively as the great symphonist who cast a long and powerful shadow over the musical history of his native Finland. Yet his oeuvre is far more diverse. It includes songs, choirs and piano music in equal measure. The latter is generally believed to include the well-known Valse Triste op. 44 (1904) - but it is an arrangement of a number that was written a year earlier as incidental music for the play Kuolema.
This strangely distorted reception pervades almost the entire oeuvre. We are therefore all the more grateful for the edition of all his works, supervised by a competent team of scholars in Helsinki, which has been published step by step by Breitkopf & Härtel (incidentally, a publisher favored by Sibelius himself). This major project became necessary for several reasons: Not all the works are available in print, many editions have long been out of print, and countless printing errors have been stubbornly handed down to this day. At the same time, unknown works are also coming back into focus.
This is particularly true of the piano music - a surprising aspect of Sibelius' oeuvre, as it is characterized entirely by short and entertaining character pieces. As you might have guessed, they were written primarily for financial reasons, but soon turned sour for the composer. Thus, with regard to the Ten piano pieces op. 58 (1909), an initial creative euphoria first gave way to strong doubts ("because I am not familiar with this piano technique") and then to the constraints of my wallet: "Finances are forcing me to compose piano pieces." What is astonishing is the high compositional quality of all these Bread works published in various operas. The burden associated with them cannot be felt at any point - this applies in particular to the current selection of 18 pieces from the years 1887 to 1920, compiled in a handy booklet. The rediscovery of these gems is definitely worthwhile.
The facsimile of Luonnotar op. 70 (1913), a tone poem for soprano and orchestra whose musical significance has been underestimated. This edition, printed to the highest standards, comprises the autograph score and the piano reduction made by Sibelius himself, supplemented by an instructive foreword by Timo Virtanen. Published as a special volume of the complete edition, it is not only a welcome gift for the jubilee year, which in some places has hardly been noticed.
Fortunately, the complete edition itself was not tempted by this occasion to produce a shirt-sleeved output - only the male choirs a cappella and the two Scènes historiques. It is therefore fitting that the publisher has published a study score of the tone poem, first printed in 2006, for little money. Skogsrået (The Wood Nymph); an early creation from 1893/95 and perhaps for this very reason of a certain charm.
Jean Sibelius, Piano Pieces. 18 selected pieces, EB 8855, € 15.90, Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden 2015
id., Complete Works (JSW), published by the National Library of Finland and the Sibelius Society of Finland, special volume facsimile edition of Luonnotar op. 70. SON 626, € 79.00
id., Skogsrået. Tone poem for orchestra, edited by Tuija Wicklund, study score, PB 5564-07, € 13.90
