It is all the more surprising, therefore, that he composed and published only a single string quartet in his maturity. The list of his juvenilia includes a piano quintet, four piano trios and about twenty works for string quartet, some incomplete. Tchaikovsky is a similar example, demonstrating his German-influenced contrapuntal skill when he chooses (as does Verdi in his fugal finale), but otherwise relying on his more instinctive gifts of melody, elegance and felicitous scoring.ĭuring his earliest creative period Sibelius was strongly attracted to chamber music. While Verdi does not attempt to emulate the rigorous developmental processes exercised by the great quartet composers, he does create on his own terms a highly individual and satisfying work distinguished by abundant craftsmanship. One might gather from his diffidence that the piece is unpretentious, but it is so much more than a mere diversion from writing operas. He also laid himself open to criticism that the piece may be less than idiomatic when he welcomed the plan to perform the work in London with twenty players to a part – “since there are certain passages which require a fuller sonority than a mere quartet can furnish”. He remarked drily: “I don’t know whether it is good or bad, only that it is a quartet.” With astonishing modesty, he claimed to have composed it “merely for amusement”. Unsure of its value, he delayed publication until three years later. roughly the period of Aida and the Requiem. Verdi completed his only string quartet in 1873 – i.e. Verdi is a typical case, a natural man of the theatre who composed about thirty operas, and who is not immediately associated with instrumental forms. These genres are traditionally associated with sonata form, a disciplined structure requiring an entirely different approach. Do try the B-flat quartet: its quality will surprise you.With the obvious exception of Mozart, the most famous operatic composers were not at all prolific in the spheres of the symphony, string quartet or sonata. As suggested with respect to the major works, the Tempera Quartet handles all of this music expertly, and BIS's sonics are the most consistently excellent in the business. A tiny fragment of the original ending of Voces Intimae only a few seconds long fulfills BIS's intention to record every scrap of music that Sibelius wrote but the disc concludes sonorously with the Andante festivo, taken at a good clip and sounding less solemn than usual in this reduced format. It ends somewhat ambiguously (nothing new when it comes to Sibelius), here suggestive of more to follow-but what that might have been we will probably never know. The opening piece on the disc, a 12-minute Adagio, features a few attractive but not really memorable ideas. However, on occasion-in fortes-the tone of the violins turns a bit crude as the players dig into the notes with excessive vehemence. In the latter piece, the clean ensemble and vigorous rhythmic profiling prevent the music from sounding dour, particularly in the central slow movement (from which the quartet's nickname derives). The Tempera Quartet performs both this work and the later Voces Intimae with notable liveliness and evident enthusiasm. It also shows something of that instinctive feeling for movement that the mature composer developed to such a phenomenal degree. It contains some striking anticipations of the composer we know and love, particularly in the harmonies of its slow movement and in its imaginative use of string texture (pizzicato especially). 4 (1890) is quite lovely and well worth hearing.
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