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.

His concert career began in 1943, and was confined to Scandinavia, Vienna and the Soviet Union, after which he became a private teacher.

[1] His doctoral dissertation from the University of Helsinki in 1960 was on the piano works of Jean Sibelius; he became Professor of Musicology there from 1960 to 1983.

It used a wealth of hitherto unavailable personal material including private letters and diaries, to which he was given unrestricted access.

[1] Tawaststjerna also wrote on Sergei Prokofiev, but was unable to complete a major biography of Dmitri Shostakovich before his death.