Symphony No. 3 in C major op. 52

If Jean Sibelius really did call his Third Symphony his "most unfortunate child," he was perhaps thinking not only of the work's hesitant reception, but also of its difficult birth. Sibelius began the piece in 1904, but then stopped and only resumed work on his not very detailed sketches in 1906/07. He kept making alterations until the final rehearsal and up to the premiere. Yet even then he had not yet attained the final form of the Third, as Timo Virtanen has shown.

The editor who is also the editorial director of the Sibelius Complete Edition recently published his dissertation on the Third Symphony, in which he devoted much space to the origin and the sketches. He was thus practically predestined to review all the various sources and present the work within the Complete Edition as the "Fassung letzer Hand," or definitive version.