Violin Concerto

“To the dear master Jean Sibelius in reverence and friendship – Wilhelm Kempff – 23 May 34.” Thus the handwritten dedication on the piano score kept in “Ainola House,” the Finnish composer’s residence. When the piano virtuoso Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991) was on tour in Scandinavia in 1920, Sibelius invited him to his home. Preserved is a chair on the underside of which his wife Aino wrote: “Sitting on this chair, Wilhelm Kempff played wonderful compositions by Bach on 19 February 1922 and moved us all to tears.” Since then, Kempff was a friend of the family and played Sibelius’s music in concerts. A decade later, a large-scale composition by Kempff emerged from the relationship between the young German musician and the Finnish master: his Violin Concerto op. 38. It is today no longer well known that, in addition to his career as a pianist, Wilhelm Kempff was a successful and very prolific composer. He wrote six operas, many orchestral works, including two symphonies, chamber music works, religious organ and choral works, art songs, and naturally numerous piano pieces. No performance material has been preserved for the Violin Concerto. The conductor Joe Yamaji has now reconstructed the orchestral part from the information in the original piano reduction, thus making possible the acquaintance with Kempff’s music, and with an original late-romantic work infused with traces of modern style and tributes to Sibelius.