“ps – How about the Sibelius concerto occasionally?” | by T. Wozonig

The stimulating framework of the workshop “Historical Perspectives on Musical Commissions” prompted me to reflect upon the two protagonists of my ongoing PhD project – Salzburg-born conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) and Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) – from the perspective of “patronage” and “commission.” While in the call for papers, musical patronage, following Louis Epstein’s 2022-volume The Creative Labor of Music Patronage in Interwar France, was defined as “premeditated collaborations between patrons and composers to produce new music,” I had to adapt some of these concepts: Not only was it necessary to extend the idea of “work” beyond composition to the sphere of performance but also to shift the focus from patron to commission in the broader sense of an agreement to provide a desired product.

If applied to a classical conductor such as Karajan, one can easily identify several aspects that such a concept of “commission” might apply to. Although we are often misled by the romantic idea of aesthetic autonomy, the personal preferences of a conductor are only one, sometimes even the least important factor in the selection of a repertoire for the concert stage or the recording studio. Instead, this process is often influenced by aspects such as public taste, profitability, company policy, catalog balance, technical innovations, or contractual terms. In that sense, a conductor assigned to perform a certain piece might be regarded as fulfilling a commission in a traditional sense: As with a musical work requested by a patron from a composer, performing a piece to order means that a creative process unfolds within a discursive net of historical-institutional fundaments, personal-aesthetical autonomy, social and audience-related functionality, and economic necessities. In the case of Karajan’s Sibelius performances, reflecting upon the respective frameworks is a particularly challenging yet promising endeavor, given the relatively marginal role of Sibelius’s music in the Austro-German canon.

In total, we have evidence of at least 72 public performances of Sibelius works by Karajan in the period 1938–1983, while he has commercially set to record 36 works (in the period 1953–1984):

public concertsrecordings
studio (live)
En Saga21
Finlandia175 (1)°
Karelia Suite1
Pelleas et Melisande 1
Schwan von Tuonella13
Tapiola4
Valse triste34
Symphony No. 131
Symphony No. 22?*2
Symphony No. 484
Symphony No. 5304 (1)°
Symphony No. 623
Symphony No. 742
Violin Concerto21 (1)°
total:72 (74?)*36 (3)°
Overview of Karajan’s documented public performances and recordings of works by Jean Sibelius.
* Two concert performances of the Second Symphony are occasionally mentioned in the literature, though no evidence seems to have been preserved. ° Parenthesized live recordings were never commercially published, but were only recently retrieved from different archives.

Despite this rather substantial output, even some of those close to Karajan were puzzled by his affinity with the Finnish composer. Wolfgang Stresemann, even after having served as artistic manager of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for almost 20 years (1959–1978) during Karajan’s time as chief conductor, found it “surprising […] that the Austrian Karajan gravitates to this Nordic and harsh, often unformed, edgy music with its heavy dimensions, its obscured and veiled beauty but also its defiant rebelliousness, a reflection of the Finnish national character that is so difficult to access.”[1] Indeed, unlike the canonic works by Bach and Beethoven, Brahms and Strauss that form(ed) the unquestioned fundament of public musical life in Austria and Germany, Sibelius was never well established in these countries, drawing regular skepticism from critics for Karajan’s “daring undertaking”[2] to conduct Sibelius’s music in public.

Given this reserve from his contemporaries, it seems legitimate to assume an honest affection of Karajan toward some of Sibelius’s tone poems and symphonies, an assumption that is also underpinned by a series of sources from the Eliette and Herbert von Karajan archives in Salzburg as well as the Berlin Philharmonic archive. When violinist David Oistrach was invited to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1957, Karajan seems to have suggested that Oistrach should play the violin concerto by Sibelius – an idea orchestral manager Gustav von Westermann was clearly unsettled by: “Oistrach in February 1957 should perhaps play Beethoven for his introduction, or are you really more interested in the Sibelius concerto?”[3] The fact that Oistrach did not perform the Sibelius concerto in his Berlin appearance proves that Westermann’s reluctance prevailed. Similarly, in a letter from 22 August 1988, Karajan proposed to young Anne-Sophie Mutter to perform the Sibelius concerto “some time”, a suggestion that was never carried out either.[4] Similarly, a letter from January 1981 indicates that Karajan suggested including a Sibelius symphony in one of his concerts during the 1982 season of the Salzburger Festspiele[5] – again, this idea was dismissed, and he never performed Sibelius in Salzburg.

While these cases provide examples of, so to say, “commissions ex negativo” – concert programs that were not least the result of requests to not conduct a certain repertoire –, other sources indicate that not all of Karajan’s Sibelius recordings were carried out on the grounds of personal conviction. Probably the most enlightening document is a letter by an EMI manager to Karajan from 29 December 1980. The letter contains an overview of completed sessions, as well as a list of pieces that “remain to be recorded in order to complete Sibelius cycle [sic],” among others, the First Symphony and the “fill-up” Karelia Suite, which were issued in 1981.[6] The fact that both works never held a significant role in Karajan’s repertoire – the symphony had last appeared on one of his programs almost 40 years ago, while he had never performed the suite at all – further supports the assumption that its recording in the studio was primarily the result of contractual terms – of a codified commission, as it is.

Such examples can shed light on the activities of individual performers and, therefore, on the constitution of the classical repertoire that we, the audience, encounter in concerts or on recordings. The identification of and reflection upon the factors of these processes help to deepen our understanding of “commission” in the sphere of musical performance – a sphere that is itself imbedded in a highly discursive network of musical composition, communication, and reception.


[1] Wolfgang Stresemann, … und abends in die Philharmonie. Erinnerungen an große Dirigenten, Frankfurt/Main, Vienna et al.: Ullstein 1985, 201, trans. by the author.

[2] vel-, “Karajan am Pult… und an der Wanne,” Berliner Zeitung, 15 May 1965. Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Archive, trans. by the author.

[3] Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Archive, trans. by the author.

[4] “ps – wie ware es gelegentlich mit dem sibelius-konzert?” (‘ps – How about the Sibelius concerto occasionally?’) Eliette and Herbert von Karajan Institute Salzburg, trans. by the author.

[5] Eliette und Herbert von Karajan Institute Salzburg, sig. Dr.Gi/R, 7 January 1981.

[6] Eliette and Herbert von Karajan Institute Salzburg.


Information on the author: Thomas Wozonig (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz)

studied musicology, music theory, and music education in Graz. Recently, he was a member of the FWF-funded project “Points of Discontinuity” (2022–2024) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. His dissertation (planned for fall 2024) addresses Herbert von Karajan as a conductor of Jean Sibelius. He has published several articles and (co-)edited volumes on performance research, esp. the history of conducting (recently on Karl Böhm, Munich: text+kritik 2024). He is a member of the board of the Society for Music Theory (GMTH), ÖGMw (Austrian Musicological Society), and artistic director of the concert series “Schlosskonzerte Gleinstätten.” Contact: twozonig@gmail.com


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Thomas Wozonig (February 10, 2025). “ps – How about the Sibelius concerto occasionally?” | by T. Wozonig. Performers as Patrons of New Music. Retrieved November 17, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13aiu


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