We’re delighted to announce that Professor Daniel Grimley’s new book on Sibelius has recently been named as a Presto Classical Prizewinner and a TLS book of the year! The book, published earlier this year by Reaktion, discusses the life and music of Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius.
The Presto Music awards stated that:
We are very pleased to announce the winning book publications for the annual Presto Music Awards! With so many high-quality tomes to choose from, it was extremely hard to narrow it down to just five selections. However, common to all five winners is an engagingly-written style combined with authoritatively-researched content that is both entertaining to read and highly informative about the person or topic in question.
TLS wrote of Professor Grimley’s book:
The three-word subtitle of Daniel M. Grimley’s ‘Jean Sibelius: Life, music, silence’ (Reaktion) provides the key to its excellence. “Life” show Sibelius’s emergence from a Swedish-speaking provincial-city background into becokming an international celebrant of Finnish language, myth, poetry and landscape. “Music” insists on the varieties within Sibelius’s output – song, piano compositions, theatre music (with ‘Everyman’ outstanding) as well as the tone-poems and seven symphonies, here superbly analysed. “Silence” means “27 years … an intractable dilemma”. Grimley probes political ambivalences, the reality of an Eighth symphony, while leaving us with huge gratitude for the incomparable richness of “Life” and “Music.”
You can find more information on the book, as well as details for purchase, here.
