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“Kuller­vo paime­nes­sa” (1896) by Sigfrid August Keinänen

The con­cert-going pub­lic doesn’t asso­ciate Sibelius with cham­ber music, but he actu­al­ly com­posed quite a bit of it, includ­ing four string quar­tets. One of them, the Quar­tet in D Minor, Op.56, known as “Voces Inti­mae”, has made it into the stan­dard reper­toire. With it’s jaun­ty rhythms, pecu­liar twists and turns, and fre­net­ic pas­sages that must work up a sweat among the play­ers, it has won a place in the sun, though it’s not in the same league with the famous Beethoven, Bartók, or Dvořák quar­tets. It’s always been a favourite of mine, because it seems to con­vey a mood that hits me occa­sion­al­ly, for which there is no com­mon name. It was com­posed around the time of the stark, intro­spec­tive Fourth Sym­pho­ny, and it shares some of its strange­ness. But Sibelius com­posed three oth­ers, sel­dom per­formed. The first, in E‑flat, is a youth­ful effort with lit­tle to com­mend it. It’s just warmed-over Hay­den, con­struct­ed by the book. But the sec­ond and third ones, in A Minor and B‑flat, are lis­ten­able and enter­tain­ing. Sibelius pret­ty obvi­ous­ly drew his inspi­ra­tion from Dvořák, but you can hear dis­tinc­tive­ly Sibelian ele­ments in both. The B‑flat one has evolved suf­fi­cient­ly to stand next to Voces Inti­mae with­out shame, and it should be played more.