Navigating Sibelius's oeuvre Ĭhoral works (8%) Works with and without opus While his orchestral works meant the most to him, Sibelius refused to dismiss his miniatures (piano pieces, songs, a cappella choral works) as insignificant rather, he thought these pieces "represented his innermost self" and "believed in their future". Today, Sibelius is remembered principally as a composer for orchestra (particularly celebrated are his symphonies, tone poems, and lone concerto), although he produced viable works in all major genres of classical music. This thirty-year creative drought-commonly referred to as the "Silence of Järvenpää", in reference to the sub-region of Helsinki in which the composer, his wife Aino, and their daughters resided-occurred at the height of his international and domestic celebrity. Īfter 1926's Tapiola, Sibelius completed no new works of significance, although he infamously labored until the late-1930s or the early-1940s on his Eighth Symphony, which he never completed and probably destroyed c. A second inspiration was the natural world, especially birds for example, he described the call of the crane as "the Leitmotiv of my life". Frequently, Sibelius found inspiration in the ancient metre and myths of Finland's national epic, the Kalevala. Over this period, his style evolved "along two parallel lines: from the national to the universal on the one hand, and from the Romantic to the Classical on the other". However, the 1890s to the 1920s represent the key decades of Sibelius's production. This began around 1875 with a short miniature for violin and cello called Water Droplets ( Vattendroppar), and ended a few months before his death at age 91 with the orchestration of two earlier songs, Come Away, Death ( Kom nu hit, död) and Kullervo's Lament ( Kullervon valitus). ![]() The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) wrote over 550 original works during his eight-decade artistic career. Olav Anton Thommessen’s Felix Remix is a filler in every sense of the word.Sibelius at the time of his final masterpiece, Tapiola (1926) That, and perhaps the EngegŠrd’s delicious lightness and occasional breathlessness, are better suited to the quartet aesthetic of Grieg (Ravel’s hero) than to that of Sibelius. Turn to the Sibelius Quartet, and I’m afraid some familiar old problems surface: an Adagio di molto movement that moves too quickly to achieve the suggested tenacity, and some fear of the background patterning in the Vivace, which the quartet seems to want to shape (the way Sibelius projects things on to it means that the players don’t have to). The recording helps, with the right combination of distance and proximity. The EngegŠrd Quartet can do ‘plainness’ too – all-important in Grieg’s music – as witness Jan Clemens Carlsen’s cello solo over his tremolo colleagues in the first movement, full of purity and air. ![]() The Romanze collapses into turmoil from its own nonchalance and the stalking pizzicato accompanying passage in the finale is vividly delivered. ![]() Emotionally, the ensemble is just as lithe. It’s good to hear Grieg’s utterly individual string quartet played by an ensemble that has an equally distinctive sound – in this case, the EngegŠrd Quartet’s tight blend and Ravelian lightness, so refreshing when the thick textures of Grieg’s score (all that double-stopping) so often weigh it down. Description: A Norwegian ensemble gets right inside Grieg’s singular String Quartet
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