Sibelius' own Andante Festivo
Matthew B. Tepper
Sibelius Live," which was apparently a private issue by Finnish Radio on its
own label, YLE. The catalogue number, for anybody who wants to try to find
it, is CDY 231.
The chief attraction here is the first publication of the authentic acedate
recording of Sibelius conducting his own "Andante Festivo" on 1 January 1939,
with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra appearing in New York as some sort
of commemoration of the upcoming World's Fair. The other items, with the
same orchestra, are more familiar: the Violin Concerto with David Oistrakh,
Nils-Eric Fougstedt conducting, from 1954; and Paul Kletzki doing "En Saga"
in 1958.
A few years ago, Ondine issued a grab-bag of recordings from their Sibelius
catalogue, all short but complete works, with various conductors, plus two
apparent bonuses: the same "Andante Festivo," and the symphonic poem "Aino"
by Robert Kajanus, Jorma Panula conducting the Finnish RSO and the Helsinki
University Male Voice Choir (abbreviated sometimes as just "YL").
Naturally, one wants to know: is either edition preferable? I've finally
had the opportunity to compare, and the transfers seem identical, except that
the YLE edition (the one you probably can't find) contains a spoken
introduction in English (1:23) by some gentleman who really really really
hopes that 1939 will be a year of peace in the world, and a few seconds of
applause at the end. Why these were omitted from the Ondine release, I don't
know, but if you can live without them, the Ondine will fulfill a "composer
as performer of his own music" spot in your collection.
An interesting note: The YLE disc has notes in Finnish and (abridged) in
English, as if this were intended to be an international handout. Maybe it
was a gift from Finnish radio executives to music industry professionals in
the USA, because I found mine at House of Records in Santa Monica, located a
few doors down from NARAS headquarters.
And just to clear things up: There used to be a performance available on a
World Records LP, and probably other issues (such as "Ionisation," Symposium
1253), which claimed to be this performance, but which isn't. At a timing of
7:07, it's considerably broader, but still very intense.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Take THAT, Daniel Lin, Mark Sadek, James Lin & Christopher Chung!
Matthew B. Tepper
caused the following letters to be typed in
news:ojkvh05ogqknfarlk...@4ax.com:
> "Matthew B. Tepper" <oyž@earthlink.net> op Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:13:03
> GMT:
>
>> The chief attraction here is the first publication of the authentic
>> acedate recording of Sibelius conducting his own "Andante Festivo" on 1
>> January 1939, with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra appearing in
>> New York as some sort of commemoration of the upcoming World's Fair.
>
> Are you sure? I have it on an EMI l.p. (World Records Retrospect Series)
> and the recording location is given as Radio Concert Hall, Helsinki. BTW,
> other items on the l.p. are Violin Concerto (Jascha Heifetz, 26-11-1935)
> and En Saga (14/15-11-1938 and 7-7-1939, that's what it says), both with
> the LPO conducted by Thomas Beecham.
That attribution is now known to be false. It's been hashed over a few
times here before, so here's a link:
Jon Bell
Matthew B. Tepper <oyş@earthlink.net> wrote:
>M-e-i_j-e-r <spam_deletethis...@deadspam.com> appears to have
>caused the following letters to be typed in
>news:ojkvh05ogqknfarlk...@4ax.com:
>
>> GMT:
>>
>>> The chief attraction here is the first publication of the authentic
>>> acedate recording of Sibelius conducting his own "Andante Festivo" on 1
>>> January 1939, with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra appearing in
>>> New York as some sort of commemoration of the upcoming World's Fair.
>>
>> Are you sure? I have it on an EMI l.p. (World Records Retrospect Series)
>> and the recording location is given as Radio Concert Hall, Helsinki. BTW,
>> other items on the l.p. are Violin Concerto (Jascha Heifetz, 26-11-1935)
>> and En Saga (14/15-11-1938 and 7-7-1939, that's what it says), both with
>> the LPO conducted by Thomas Beecham.
>
>That attribution is now known to be false.
The attribution of the performance on that LP is of course incorrect, but
it does give the correct location of the performance that it was supposed
to document. The real Sibelius performance of the Andante Festivo did
indeed take place in Helsinki. It was broadcast live by Finnish Radio,
and recorded on whatever they used at the time for their recordings.
I wonder how many people in New York could have actually heard that live
broadcast, though.
--
Jon Bell <jtbe...@presby.edu> Presbyterian College
Dept. of Physics and Computer Science Clinton, South Carolina USA