This is a successor to the Tempera Quartet's previous discs
of Sibelius's earliest string quartets; BIS-CD-1376 (see
review)
and BIS-CD-1476 (1885-89 and 1888-89 respectively).
Where it is virtually impossible to pick out the ‘real’ mature
Sibelius in some of those early works the individuality begins
to show through in these. Amid a thrumming intensity redolent
of Dvořák the big 1890
Adagio reaches forward
to the avian chuckle of the later works. You can hear this at
5:34. Later a hymnal soulfulness emerges that touches on Finlandia
(11:28). It was written in Loviisa.
From the same year comes the B Flat major quartet. It is
about the same length as the famous
Voces Intimae of 1922.
It was started and finished in Loviisa but between those two
events there was Sibelius’s visit to Berlin in 1889. The
wondrously confident quartet radiates summery joy and again has
the boisterous buoyancy of Dvořák even in the sauntering
Andante
sostenuto second movement. There is then a more obviously
Scandinavian
Presto which is full of wan yet vivacious
gestures. The final anxious
Allegro ends calmly. Making
his farewells to Loviisa he set off for Vienna where ironically
he was to discover the Kalevala and set off a new and overpowering
spring of inspiration.
The
Voces Intimae quartet was largely written in London
where he was fêted by his British circl, Rosa Newmarch,
Granville Bantock and Henry Wood. He was anxious and no doubt
poor company but there was a reason. This was the time (1909)
of his recuperation from the removal of the throat tumour in
1908. In
Voces Intimae we catch the earliest intimations
of the dark side of his symphonism - to be heard at its masterful
apex in the Fourth Symphony of 1911. In fact
Voces Intimae,
which
is in five movements, is far less ‘forbidding’ than
the symphony with its romantic crepuscular half-lights. The bustle
and breathless flitter of the second movement precedes the long
and questioning yet consolatory quasi-Mahlerian
Adagio di
Molto. The deliberately paced and emphatic
Allegretto then
stands aside for the buzzing and skittering
Allegro which
reminds one all the time of the
Lemminkainen Return. The
famous
Andante Festivo of 1922 was written for the 25th
anniversary of a factory at Säynätsalo. It's a poised
and lovely piece with a hymnal mien. Do I hear in this version
the effect of the wheezing harmonium - an instrument included
in his earliest family pieces.
It is typical of the Tempera that the unfamiliar and the familiar
are here played for all they are worth. There is not a sniff
of academic completism about these performances.
The readable and valuable notes are by that BIS stalwart of longstanding,
Andrew Barnett; now one of the great Sibelius biographers.
Rob Barnett
Reviews
of the BIS Sibelius Edition recordings
Tempera Quartet
(Laura Vikman (violin); Silva Koskela (violin); Tiila Kangas
(viola); Ulla Lampela (cello)) 
