Kullervo op. 7 – Piano-Vocal Arrangements Movements III and V – first version Febr. 1892

Jean Sibelius's own piano-vocal scores of the two choral movements from his Kullervo Symphony Op. 7 were forgotten for nearly a century. It was not until 1982 that the manuscripts were transferred from the composer's estate to the Helsinki University Library. They will be printed for the first time in the Complete Edition.

They allow scholars a fascinating insight into the revisions that Sibelius made even before the world premiere, and they supplement the new edition of the first text-critical score recently presented by Glenda Dawn Goss within the framework of the Complete Edition. We can see how explosive Kullervo's vocal text must have been in 1892 by the fact that the composer decided to replace the original women's chorus with a male chorus. His teacher Martin Wegelius had advised him to bear in mind that female choral singers might refuse to perform the incestuous seduction scene.