The Wood Nymph worldwide
The critical editions of Jean Sibelius’s collected works (Jean Sibelius Works) are proliferating all over the world as printed publications and live performances based on them. The Sibelius project at the National Library of Finland produces the actual blue-covered volume that contains, besides the critically examined musical manuscript, a thoroughly researched text that illuminates the work’s origin, performance and publishing histories, and provides detailed descriptions of source materials, differences between sources, as well as the solutions and justifications underlying editorial decisions. Based on this edition, the publisher Breitkopf ä Härtel, manufactures practical editions of the works as well as materials for performers.
So far the Sibelius project has published 14 volumes containing solo songs, songs accompanied by orchestra, piano music, as well as orchestral works. Publisher information for the first part of 2009, indicates that the works in the volumes already published have been performed at about 85 concerts in numerous European countries as well as in the USA, Canada, Japan and Peru. Among the most popular works are the Symphonies No. 1 and 2, each of which has been performed about 30 times.
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The Sibelius project also publishes Sibelius’s complete, but previously unpublished works; one of them is the symphonic poem for orchestra Skogsrået (Metsänhaltia/The Wood Nymph) op. 15, that was published as a critical edition in 2006. Subsequently the work has been performed several times a year. Besides Europe, it has also captivated listeners in Brasilia, Brazil, Tokyo, Japan, Quebec, Canada as well as the USA, where three of the most recent performances of Skogsrået took place in late April and early May. Led by Conductor Osmo Vänskä, the Minnesota Orchestra first performed the work in Minneapolis, where the second concert was also a radio broadcast. Later the orchestra performed the same program at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
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Skogsrået was inspired by a poem of the same name written by the Swede Viktor Rydberg; copies of the poem were also handed out to the audience at the work’s premiere in the spring of 1895. In the poem, a handsome young man becomes lost in a forest and falls under the spell of a wood nymph. After a romantic episode, the wood nymph vanishes and the unhappy man pines away for the rest of his life. The content of the poem was also clarified for the American audience, and the relationship between the music and the text was explained by an enthusiastic newspaper critic who had nothing but praise for the Minneapolis Orchestra, its performance, and the music, admitting “that even in this early work the visionary Sibelius of later years was lurking”.
This year the Jean Sibelius Works project has published two volumes: the First Symphony Op. 39, edited by Timo Virtanen, and more recently, two versions of the tone poem En saga Op. 9, edited by Tuija Wicklund.
En saga was composed in 1892 and revised by Sibelius in 1902. The revised version was also published and has since become one of Sibelius’s most beloved and frequently performed works. The original score was momentarily lost for several years, but was recovered and is now being published for the first time.
Tuija Wicklund
tuija.wicklund@helsinki.fi
Further information about the Jean Sibelius Works project:
http://www.nationallibrary.fi/culture/sibelius.html
Editor-in-chief Timo Virtanen
timo.virtanen@helsinki.fi
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IN BRIEF
"Words and concepts limit reality, but silence and music can break the domination of words."
Veikko Anttonen
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