In his youth, Jean Sibelius pursued a seemingly insatiable course in practicing and refining scoring techniques in chamber settings. This resulted in an output so heavy with miniscule pieces for chamber groups that they belong to a part of Sibelius' output that to date has remained incompletely documented, and therefore inaccessible. As important as Sibelius is, these pieces are so tiny and numerous that it would hardly justify the cost of the printer's ink used to publish it. The Swedish label BIS has found a solution; to ...
Read More
In his youth, Jean Sibelius pursued a seemingly insatiable course in practicing and refining scoring techniques in chamber settings. This resulted in an output so heavy with miniscule pieces for chamber groups that they belong to a part of Sibelius' output that to date has remained incompletely documented, and therefore inaccessible. As important as Sibelius is, these pieces are so tiny and numerous that it would hardly justify the cost of the printer's ink used to publish it. The Swedish label BIS has found a solution; to record all the pieces with an expert group, thus making the music available to the public and alleviating the immediate need for a pricey volume that will mainly sit on the shelf and gather dust in university libraries. Sibelius: String Quartets 1885-1889 contains no less than 52 string quartet movements Sibelius created in these years. The most substantive of all is the full-length String Quartet in E flat major of 1885, the only piece on the disc previously published and recorded,...
Read Less
