Erik W. Tawaststjerna

Erik Werner Tawaststjerna (10 October 1916 – 22 January 1993) was a Finnish musicologist who also worked as a pianist, pedagogue, and critic. He is remembered as a significant biographer of Jean Sibelius for his multi-volume magnum opus on the composer .

Biography Erik Werner Tawaststjerna was born in Mikkeli, Grand Duchy of Finland in 1916. His piano studies were with Ilmari Hannikainen, K. Bernhard, Heinrich Leygraf, Heinrich Neuhaus, Alfred Cortot and Jules Gentil. His concert career began in 1943, and was confined to Scandinavia, Vienna and the Soviet Union, after which he became a private teacher. He held posts in the Press and Cultural Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry of Finland from 1948 to 1960. and one abridged volume in Russian. It was awarded the Tieto-Finlandia Award. The immediate impetus for the work was the 1959 biography of Sibelius by Harold E. Johnson, which created an uproar in Finland, and caused Sibelius's family to commission Tawaststjerna to write a more balanced account of the life of the composer.

Drawing on his background as a pianist and pedagogue