SKU: HL.14019121

ISBN 9781844492954. 9.0x12.0x0.303 inches.

Commissioned by the first Sibelius Conductor's Competition held in Helsinki in May 1995, as an obligatory piece to be rehearsed by all the competitors, Arena was performed in its totality at the annual Avanti! Chamber Orchestra's festival in Porvoo (Finland). Thematic thinking has never been a main feature in Lindberg's music, but here horizontal lines (one would not yet dare to call them melodies) gain some independence, for example in ornamental figures and in the intense cello solo around the middle of the piece. Arena also reveals some clearly new material - Lindberg has talked about Beethoven-like formal thinking, referring to a passage where the sense of movement seems to accelerate to an extreme so that finally one perceives only a motionless surface. Another new element - which was already used to some extent at the warmly hovering ending of Aura - is the almost romantic sound world and the suspension of the harmonies in the final climax, which can make one think of Mahler and Berg, or Lindberg's grand predecessor and compatriot, Sibelius. This is the Score, published by Chester Music; the duration of the pieces is approximately 16 minutes.

SKU: FG.55011-826-3

ISBN 9790550118263.

Olli Kortekangas composed Vida vingar (Swedish for Wide wings) for piano and organ in 2021-2022. It was premiered in S:t John's Church in Helsinki, Finland - with 70 metres' distance between the two instruments.

This product includes one playing score with the both instruments parts. For a performance two copies are needed.

SKU: FG.55011-754-9

ISBN 9790550117549.

Yrjö Kilpinen (1892-1959) is most known for his hundreds of lieds and song cycles. His instrumental compositions have been less know, ie. the six piano sonatas and suite for gamba and piano. Large-scale Sonata for violin and piano is dated in 1935 with opus number 87. The work was never finished, and National Library in Helsinki holds several sketches and versions in its Kilpinen collection.

In 2015 violinist Frida Backman commissioned a completion of the Sonata from composer Walter Wolff. Wolff worked on the sketches and versions until 2018, when the work was completed and the Sonata premiered.

The present publication is the first publication of the Sonata. It sheds light to Kilpinen as an instrumental composer.

The movements are: Allegro - Andante - Andante Moderato - Allegro

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Yrjö Kilpinen (1892-1959) tunnetaan lähinnä lied-sävellyksistään, joita aktiivisina sävellysvuosina syntyikin satoja. Vähemmälle huomiolle ovat jääneet hänen instrumentaalisävellyksensä, mm. kuusi pianosonaattia, sellosonaatti, sarja gamballe ja pianolle sekä muutamat pikkukappaleet.

Vuodelle 1935 päivätty neliosainen, laajamuotoinen sonaatti viululle ja pianolle (op. 87) jäi keskeneräiseksi. Suomen Kansalliskirjaston Kilpinen-kokoelmassa oli useita luonnoksia ja eri versioita. Sonaatin osista neljäs oli keskeneräisin.

Viulutaiteilija Frida Backman tilasi konserttiaan varten sonaatin täydennöksen säveltäjä Walter Wolffilta. Hän sai työnsä päätöksen 2018, jonka jälkeen sonaatti kantaesitettiin.

Fennica Gehrmanin julkaisu on sonaatin ensipainos, ja siten laajentaa kuvaamme Yrjö Kilpisestä instrumenttiteosten säveltäjänä.

Teoksen osat: Allegro - Andante - Andante Moderato - Allegro.

SKU: HL.50605288

ISBN 9781705174593. UPC: 196288095736. 9.0x12.0x0.081 inches.

This arrangement of Die Aussicht, for soprano and string quartet, was first performed in August 2019 during the Creative Dialogue Workshop at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland.

SKU: FG.55011-372-5

ISBN 9790550113725.

Images of the sea figure prominently throughout my life and memories: from holidays on the Atlantic coast during my Canadian childhood to my current Baltic home, and the imagined, only later experienced Mediterranean of my ancestral heritage. As an immigrant (son of an immigrant) bound to two northern countries, the sea is emblematic of my twin homelands, from the expanses of water surrounding them to those separating them. A Mari usque ad Mare. The sea is also an enduring image of the unknown, of expanses unexplored, of the raw power of nature and, for too many currently, of terror holding a hope of refuge - or the pain of loss.
Such disparate ideas were captured for me in the seascapes of the New York painter MaryBeth Thielhelm, whom I met in 2008 during a residency on the Gulf of Mexico. Her vast, abstract, nearly monochromatic depictions of imaginary seas in wildly varying moods were the catalyst for a concerto where the piano is frequently far from a hero battling a collective, but rather acts as a channel for elemental forces surging up from the orchestra, floating - sometimes barely so - on its constantly shifting surface. There are few themes to speak of, beyond a handful of iconic ideas that periodically cycle upward. Rather, the piano's material is largely an ornamentation of the more primal rhythmic and harmonic impulses from the orchestra below - a poetic interpretation, if you will, of the more immediate experience of facing the vastness of some unknown body of water.
The title Nameless Seas is borrowed from one of Thielhelm's exhibitions, as are those of the four movements, which are bridged together into two halves of roughly equal weight - one rhapsodic and free, the other more single-minded and direct, separated only by a short breath. The opening movement, Nocturne, is predominantly calm, if brooding, darkness and light alternating throughout. Lyrical arabesques sparkle over gently lapping cross-currents in the strings and mirrored timpani, the piano's full power only rarely deployed. The waves gradually build, drawing in the full orchestra for a meeting of forces in Land and Sea, a brighter, more warmly lyrical scene that unfolds in series of dreamlike, sometimes even nostalgic visions, which for me carry strong memories of sitting on rocks above surging Atlantic waves. The third movement, Wake, is a fast, perpetual-motion texture of glinting, darting rhythms and sudden shafts of light, with a prominent part for the steel drums, limning the piano's quicksilver figurations. An ecstatic climax crashes into a solo cadenza that grows progressively calmer and more introspective rather than virtuosic. Much of the tension finally releases into Unclaimed Waters, a drifting, meditative seascape in which the piano is progressively engulfed by a series of ever-taller waves, ultimately dissolving into a tolling, rippling continuum of sound.
It has been a great privilege to realize such a long-held dream as this piece, and to write it for not one, but two great pianists. Risto-Matti Marin and Angela Hewitt, both of whose friendship and support have been unfailing and humbling, share the dedication. Nameless Seas was commissioned by the PianoEspoo festival and Canada's National Arts Centre, with the premieres in Ottawa and Helsinki led by Hannu Lintu and Olari Elts. Thanks are due also to the Jenny and Antti Wihuri fund, whose generous grant provided me with much-needed time, and Escape to Create in Seaside, Florida, the source to which I returned to do a large part of the work.

SKU: FG.55011-502-6

ISBN 9790550115026.

Even though I was and remain a proponent of absolute music, the things that we see and experience inevitably colour and energise our thought processes. The grand old man of Finnish Modernism Paavo Heininen (b. 1938) turned his impressions of Boston into violin sonatas op. 134 (2016). All the three sonatas - Boston Sonata, Boston Variations and Boston Ballade - were premiered in one concert in Helsinki celebrating the composer's 80th birthday in May 2018 by Kaija Saarikettu (violin) and Juhani Lagerspetz (piano).

SKU: HL.48024683

ISBN 9781784545062. UPC: 888680952570. 8.25x11.75 inches.

TEMPUS FUGIT was commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Finnish independence on 6 December 2017 and it received its first performance in Helsinki on that day, given by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The composer says that “if you translate TEMPUS FUGIT as 'Time Flies', you could say that Finland has travelled a long way already -but 100 years is a short time-span, and living as a human in this part of the world started long ago and, we hope, will continue formillennia to come. This relates to my fascination with Bernd Alois Zimmermann's concept of spherical time - that the past, the present and the future are continuously linked and within reach. You can also examine the inter-connection of musical time in the earlier works of Stockhausen such as Kontakte and Gruppen which had a big impact on me as a young composer. A translation of TEMPUS FUGIT that I prefer is 'Time in Flight', offering the idea that time escapes from us but bequeaths a tangible residue, rather like aplane travelling towards the distance but leaving a visible vapour trail.” This 30-minute score is a major addition to the orchestral repertory.

SKU: FG.55011-177-6

ISBN 979-0-55011-177-6.

Linjama's new work was commissioned by Kaija Saarikettu and premiered on 3 June 20114 in Helsinki by Kaija Saarikettu (violin) and Sonja Fraki (piano).

SKU: BR.SON-621

Chamber music by Jean Sibelius - a welcome addition to the chamber music repertoire for strings with piano.

ISBN 9790004803233. 9 x 12 inches.

This volume presents partly less known, but undoubtedly interesting and highly welcome additions to the chamber music repertoire for violinists and cellists in the reliable Urtext of the Complete Edition. The violin was Sibelius's instrument. He was active as a violinist mainly during his studies at the Helsinki Music Institute from 1885-1889 and for a short time thereafter. The present volume contains Jean Sibelius's opus-numbered works for violin or cello and piano, 36 compositions in total. Most of the works of this volume were created at the beginning of the 20th century and remained unpublished until the early 1920s. Sibelius composed far less music for the cello than for the violin. Malinconia (Op. 20), published in 1911, remained his only opus-numbered work exclusively for cello and piano. This volume also includes Two Pieces (Op. 77) and Four Pieces (Op. 78) as versions for violin with piano and for cello with piano.

Chamber music by Jean Sibelius - a welcome addition to the chamber music repertoire for strings with piano.