Jean Sibelius

Sämtliche Werke Serie 1 Bd. 22: Revisionen und Arrangements für Orchester

This volume of the Sibelius Complete Edition contains seven orchestral works, five of which Jean Sibelius originally composed as incidental music. However, he later separated these works from their connection with the incidental music so that they could be performed in concerts as independent compositions. The tone poem Finlandia op. 26 comes from the 'Music for the Press Celebrations' JS 137 (1899) . Valse triste and Scen med tranorna ('Scene with Cranes') op. 44 nos. 1 and 2 were written as incidental music (JS 113) for the premiere of Arvid Järnefelt's play Kuolema ('Death'), which took place in 1903; Canzonetta and Valse romantique op. 62a and 62b were additions to a stage production of Kuolema in 1911. The two waltzes with the opus number 96, Valse lyrique op. 96a and Valse chevaleresque op. 96c, are orchestral versions of works also known as piano compositions. Of these works, only Scen med tranorna remained unpublished during Sibelius' lifetime. It was probably intended to bring the piece out - the autograph score is preserved in the Breitkopf holdings in the Saxon State Archives in Leipzig - but the first edition of score and parts was not printed until 1973. This was done on the basis of a copy by an unknown copyist; the edition of Scen med tranorna based on Sibelius's autograph is published for the first time in the present volume. This complete edition volume forms the basis for the new practical Ur Text edition of Sibelius' most performed and best-known work: the tone poem Finlandia.