Amid the excitement surrounding the discovery of fragments of Sibelius’s missing eighth symphony, a mystery figure emerges from the woods.

Paul Voigt, a German violinist and sometime player in the Helsinki Philharmonic was Sibelius’s trusted copyist – that is to say he received scores in composer scrawl and transcribed them in a neat hand that could be read by an editor and printer. Little is known of him except that he was a loner who never married, living in the  Töölö district of Helsinki. When he fell sick, he mo ved in with his house cleaner and he husband. On his death in 1943, they inherited what little he left.

This included some Sibelius letters and other material.

We know he copied at least 23 pages of the eighth symphony. What became of them? Here’s Vesa Siren’s report. Anyone who knows more about Paul Voigt, please get in touch. Let’s hear it for the humble copyist.

An eyewitness, Maria Etzel, has sent me this account of the disturbance, by a single audience member, during a Bruckner concert at the South Bank:

Last night at the RFH, 
halfway through Bruckner 4 when the music was really quiet I heard 
sounds of male voices coming from the choir section. Was very 
intrigued and then I saw this tall man leaving the choir secion and 
walking towards the exit. It is a long walk from the choir to the exit 
on level 4 and all the time shouting Terrible. I think he must have 
said more when still in the choir section but was unable to 
understand. It was quite a disturbance and he managed to completely 
break the spell of the performance. Questions: A lunatic? a grudge 
against LPO? or Osmo Vänska? or disliked the Bruckner? who knows. 

Others have told me that there was no ushers present to remove the man from the hall. He was able to make his way at a leisurely pace, not to the nearest exit but to one that he preferred. I do hope the South Bank administration take measures to ensure the peace of their concerts in future. LATE EXTRA: You will find a full and frank confession from the disrupter here.

UPDATE: Here’s Erica Jeal’s measured account of the incident in the Guardian.

I have a feeling that Google Music, launching soon, will change the landscape more than iTunes or amazon has done.

And that means classical, too.

Google has announced partnerships with Universal/EMI and Sony, leaving Warner temporarily out in the cold.

But it is also offering artists a page of their own for $25 and 70 percent of the sale proceeds.

If I were an orchestra, I would ask myself: why give free tapes for release on commercial labels when I can sell them on Google for more?

And if I were an independent artist, the answer would be even more obvious.

Read on here.

And start talking to this smart lady:

It was business as usual in the chorus room.

The first of three concerts by the new music director Daniel Barenboim was cancelled due to a wildcat strike. Er, why?

Apparently something to do with overtime payments during the company’s weekend visit to the Bolshoi in Moscow. ‘It’s part of routine negotiations,’ said a union representative. Strikes are so routine at la Scala they hardly make the press.

Is there an opera house on earth with worse labour relations? Does Daniel know what kind of lions’ den he’s entering?

Oh, and does anyone in the chorus watch the Reuters wire? Latest: Italy PM Monti says Europe living hardest days since WW2, country facing serious emergency.

Here’s the Scala website statement:

Strike on 16 November 2011

A Fort Worth donor gave the city’s concertmaster his 1710 Strad to play. Thirty years on, another Fort Worth resident has loaned the orchestra another – this time a 1685 model, less prestigious but still pretty rich.

Here’s concertmaster Michael Shih and associate concertmaster Swang Lin with their tropies. Must listen out for that orch.

Louisville Orchestra musicians have shot down the latest offer. The players have been out of contract since May and the orchestra is trying to hire replacements. The musicians have asked the rest of the world to boycott any such auditions. Read on here.

Louisville… Philadelphia… Dallas… the list of US symphony orchestras that are gathering on the precipice of bankruptcy grows longer by the week.

Could Pittsburgh be next? Its president and chief executive, Lawrence Tamburri, walked out of a trustees’ meeting on Monday, saying it was ‘a good time for me to leave’. Right now. Without delay or explanation. That usually means trouble in store.

Tamburri, who had been in charge for seven years, was responsible for hiring the well-liked music director Manfred Honeck and for putting in place an economy plan to stop the constant drain of deficits – $2 million in each of the last two seasons. Honeck, a former Vienna Philharmonic player, told me this summer that as soon as he heard the musicians were being asked to take a pay cut he volunteered the same reduction in his own salary. And when one of his principal players was being lured to Los Angeles, he made damn sure that Pittsburgh matched the deal.

That kind of leadership is rare in US orchestras and, from what I can tell after several phone conversations, the mood in Heinz Hall remains both artistically and organisationally upbeat. Jim Wilkinson, who stepped into Tamburri’s shoes, is a vice-chairman of the board and a steady hand on the tiller. Financially, there is no immediate pressure.

So, why did the prez quit? No-one seems quite sure. Tamburri is a private man with a strong family life. It may just be that he assessed his priorities and decided that now, when there is no crisis and the plan seems to be working, was ‘a good time’ for him to leave. It sometimes happens that way.

When musicians in the Helsinki Philharmonic played through the newly discovered sketches of what may be a draft of Sibelius’s destroyed eighth symphony, one or two of them can be seen suppressing a yawn. it was not until they had played the music that all of the musicians were told what it was – and then everyone got their handkerchieves out and shared a historic snuffle.

I mention this only because the authenticity of these sketches as part of the eighth symphony is not instantly apparent and cannot yet be determined with certainty. Listening for the fifth time to the run-through, I hear nothing that suggests Sibelius is heading anywhere untrodden in this work. It sounds familiar, it sounds like Sibelius. There is even a woody phrase that calls mid-period Mahler to mind.

A cache of letters, disclosed today by Vesa Siren in the Helsingin Sanomat, suggests that Sibelius may have been contemplating a choral part for his symphony – and that would have been a first. But all is haze and smoke at present. The discovery is momentous. Let us see where else is leads.

The London-based artist Katharina Lupnova has sent me a painting of Mahler that she made after reading my exegesis of the relation between Jacob wrestling and the angels and the composer’s core identity. I like the body language.

Yesterday’s photograph from Ria-Novosti flashed around the world, showing the more human side of Vladimir Putin. He’s visiting a hospital in Belgorod and horsing around with the Governor, Yevgeny Savchenko.

You don’t need to be a KGB analyst to read the unspoken subtext. ‘Keep on paying me the krysha,’ he’s saying, ‘or next time it’s without novocaine.’

The scene it calls to mind is Laurence Olivier with Dustin Hoffman in ‘Marathon Man’: the effortful extraction of unwilling information. Do floss thoroughly, tonight. You really don’t ever want to meet these guys.

Unhappy with performing the politically-correct unfinished version? Unhappy with the Süssmayr completion?

Michael Finnissy has a score for you. He has finished the work as Mozart might have done had he lived in 2011.

First performance this Sunday in Southampton. More here. The Finnissy edition will be published by OUP in 2012.

My colleagues in Helsinki are torn between exultation and tears. A scholar has found what looks like a draft of the eighth symphony that Sibelius destroyed, and the music has been rushed down to the new concert hall for an impromptu performance.

Read all about it here in the English edition of Helsingin Sanomat, by Vesa Siren, and listen to three fragments on video (if the links work). The conductor is John Storgårds.

This could be the biggest musical discovery of the 21st century.