UNITED KINGDOM SIBELIUS SOCIETY
UNITED KINGDOM
SIBELIUS SOCIETY
OBJECTIVES
The Society wishes to bring the achievements of Sibelius’s music to the largest possible readership and audience. Besides being a major symphonist, indeed one of the greatest composers of symphonies, Sibelius wrote music in many forms, which is perhaps less well known to music lovers.
He wrote an opera, choral music and cantatas, music for pageants, four string quartets, many instrumental works for violin and piano, over one hundred pieces for piano collected together in groups and over one hundred songs, mainly to Swedish texts.
His orchestral works, including Finlandia, Valse Triste and Tapiola are well known thanks to conductors performing them all over the world. But we neglect the beautiful music written for various theatre productions, including Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Maeterlink’s Pelléas et Mélisande and the startlingly original scéna, Luonnotar as a well as rarities including The Oceanides and The Bard.
On the other-hand the Violin Concerto is one of the most recorded of all 20th century violin concertos and soloists perform this wonderful work in concert halls throughout the world.
The British composer, Julian Anderson, Professor of Composition and Composer-in-Residence at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London writes:
“There is virtually no major composer working today who has not been directly affected by the work of Jean Sibelius. He is indeed definitive proof of Morton Feldman’s assertion that the people who you think are conservative might really be radical”.
- The Society produces a bi-annual Journal including articles, correspondence, CD and concert reviews, forthcoming Society concerts etc.
- The Society hosts concerts with music by Sibelius and composers he has influenced.
- The Society has a collection of historic recordings by such conductors as Serge Koussevitzky, Armas Järnefelt and Nils-Eric Fougstedt and the violinist Janine Andrade playing the Violin Concerto. These are available for purchase from the Society.
“Just before ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. One of the greatest experiences in my life. Oh God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the hazy sun like a glittering, silver ribbon. Their cries were of the same woodwind timbre as those of cranes, but without any tremolo. Nature’s mystery and life’s angst!
The Fifth Symphony’s finale theme.”
A diary entry by Sibelius, April 1915
HISTORY
The first British Sibelius Society was established as a recording venture for the music of Sibelius by Walter Legge in the 1930’s. The results of these recordings remain available to music lovers through the many reissues on various channels, CDs etc
The modern Sibelius Society was established over forty years ago as a members’ organisation to propagate Sibelius’s life and music. Today it has enlarged its remit beyond the written word into many and various projects which include: seminars, lectures, festivals, the bi-annual Newsletter (to be renamed Journal), the issue of rare early recordings of Sibelius’s music and the building of associations with organisations such as publishers, concert halls, the BBC (through the recording of the Violin Concerto in 2019, published in 2021) and private enthusiasts.
We are the only Sibelius Society with a global membership.
EVENTS
CONCERT AT BURGH HOUSE
Sunday 19th May 2024 – 2pm
Programme
SIBELIUS: Four Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op.78
NIELSEN: Sonata for Violin and Piano No 2, Op.35
SIBELIUS: Two Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op.77
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SIBELIUS: Three Pieces for Violin and Piano from Op.79
DELIUS: Sonata for Cello and Piano (1916)
SIBELIUS: Sonatina for Violin and Piano, Op.80
GINA MCCORMACK violin
JANE HYLAND cello
LIONEL FRIEND piano
OFFERS & PUBLICATIONS
MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION
SOCIETY OFFICIALS
President: Edward Clark | Chairman: Stead Steadman | Secretary: Megan Swift
President: Edward Clark
Chairman: Stead Steadman
Secretary: Megan Swift
PRESIDENT
Edward Clark, President of the UK Sibelius Society Edward Clark was converted to classical music at the age of 13 by his violin teacher at Haileybury College. This was also the same year that the Beatles hit the world stage and he retains a love for both. His teacher, David Thompson, performed the concertos by Beethoven and Sibelius and was instrumental in introducing Sibelius to Edward. A year later the BBC visited him at school for an interview after he had requested a performance of the Third Symphony for broadcast that evening. As luck would have it the symphony was relayed during the weekly music class! He studied conducting under Maurice Miles in his twenties and later with ... [Read more]
CHAIRMAN
Stead Steadman, Chairman of the UK Sibelius Society S. H. P. Steadman cannot remember when he first heard of the Sibelius Society and made the effort to join it, but it was sometime in the mists of the last century. He was struck to his core by the elemental power and transcendent beauty of the music, which seemed to have a different relationship to reality from that of the compositions of other people, whose works sounded like compositions, while those of Sibelius were more like emanations from the nature of things, channelled through one who had known human weakness as well as what strength and purity we can attain to. In a concert interval feature on Radio Three, ... [Read more]
YOUTUBE
PHOTO GALLERY
These pictures come from a private collection obtained over many years of attending the annual International Sibelius Festival at Lahti, Finland. The photo of Sibelius and a piano comes from his visit to the house in which he was born in Hämeenlinna.
AINOLA 1948 PHOTOS
These photos are a collection taken by Justin Brooke in April 1948. He sent them to The Society in February 1998 with an extensive article on the background behind the photos. Justin was the Assistant Press Attaché in the British Delegation after the war. He received a phone call from Stefan Schimanski in April 1948 asking Justin to meet him the following day to catch the train to Järvenpää there to Sibelius’s home, Ainola. The photos were taken by Justin during the discussions that followed between Schimanski and Sibelius.
Schimanski was a reporter from the Manchester Guardian. The explanation as to how this meeting was arranged at a time when few if any visitors were allowed by the Sibelius family is vividly told in the article below.
In his letter to the society in 1998 he described himself as ‘probably the last English man alive to have met Sibelius’.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE LETTER AND ARTICLE
The colourisation has been added to enhance the exclusive nature of the photos.
