![]() It is the only major work for string quartet of his mature period. 56, is a five- movement chamber piece for two violins, viola, and cello written in 1909 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. In 2015, the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth, a number of special concerts and events were held, especially in the city of Helsinki. The String Quartet in D minor, Voces intimae (literal English translation: 'Intimate voices' or 'Inner voices'), Op. Since 2011, Finland has celebrated a Flag Day on 8 December, the composer's birthday, also known as the "Day of Finnish Music". The Finnish 100 mark note featured his image until 2002, when the euro was adopted. In later life, he wrote Masonic music and re-edited some earlier works while retaining an active but not always favourable interest in new developments in music. Although he is reputed to have stopped composing, he attempted to continue writing, including abortive efforts on an eighth symphony. Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s, but after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924), the incidental music for The Tempest (1926) and the tone poem Tapiola (1926), he stopped producing major works in his last thirty years, a stunning and perplexing decline commonly referred to as "The Silence of Järvenpää", the location of his home. Other works include pieces inspired by nature, Nordic mythology, and the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, over a hundred songs for voice and piano, incidental music for numerous plays, the opera Jungfrun i tornet (The Maiden in the Tower), chamber music, piano music, Masonic ritual music, and 21 publications of choral music. His other best-known compositions are Finlandia, the Karelia Suite, Valse triste, the Violin Concerto, the choral symphony Kullervo, and The Swan of Tuonela (from the Lemminkäinen Suite). Hilary Hahn plays Jean Sibeliuss staggering and impassioned Violin Concerto with the Filarmonica George Enescu, conducted by Maestro Paavo Järvi. The core of his oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies, which, like his other major works, are regularly performed and recorded in his home country and internationally. He is widely recognized as his country's greatest composer and, through his music, is often credited with having helped Finland to develop a national identity during its struggle for independence from Russia. Whichever the case may be, with the present disc the Tempera Quartet provide us with the final pieces of the puzzle of Sibelius and the string quartet – including a preliminary ending of Voces Intimae which has never been recorded before! The previous two discs have met with overwhelming praise in the international music press, both for the performances (‘la superbe interprétation du Quatuour Tempera’, ‘das hervorragend spielenden Tempera Quartet’, ‘el magnífico Tempera Quartet’) and for the interest of the repertoire: ‘an endless fount of ideas, reactions, attempts, trials, in which one discovers vigour, spontaneity, inventiveness, conviction’ (Scherzo), ‘a treasure-trove … full of unexpected surprises’ (International Record Review) and ‘this wonderful repertoire … of great beauty and a surprisingly classical balance’ (Classica-Répertoire).Jean Sibelius, born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius (8 December 1865 – 20 S… Read Full Bio ↴ Jean Sibelius, born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius (8 December 1865 – 20 September 1957), was a Finnish composer and violinist of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. And possibly his later great successes as a symphonist diverted him from the field of chamber music even after having so successfully revisited it in ‘Voces intimae’. The reason for his first long silence may be Sibelius’s discovery in the 1890s of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic that was to provide him with both subject matter and inspiration, but which lent itself more readily to an orchestral treatment. But then there is a gap of almost twenty years before Sibelius wrote his by far most famous work in the genre, the Quartet in D minor ‘Voces intimae’, and in spite of its favourable reception, he didn’t compose another work for string quartet apart from the brief Andante festivo, in 1922. ![]() The two previous discs in this trilogy of his complete works for quartet contain substantial programmes of the music written between 18, and more than half of the present disc is taken up by two works written in 1890. Jean Sibelius’s relationship to the string quartet genre is something of an enigma. BBC Music Magazine: outstanding Klassik Heute: outstanding.
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