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Some quartets play together for many years in ensembles which may be named after the first violinist (e.g. The standard structure for a string quartet is four movements, with the 1st movement in Sonata form, Allegro, in the tonic key 2nd movement is a slow movement, in thesubdominant key 3rd movement is a Minuet and Trio, in the tonic key and the 4th movement is often in Rondo form or Sonata rondo form, in the tonic key. In the 21st century it remains an important and refined musical form. A slight slackening in the pace of quartet composition occurred in the later 19th century, in part due to a movement away from classical forms by composers such as Liszt, Wagner and Richard Strauss, though it received a resurgence in the 20th with the Second Viennese School, Bartók, Shostakovich and Elliot Carter producing highly regarded examples of the genre. Quartet composition flourished in the Classical era, with Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert following Haydn in each writing a number of quartets. Thus, in many ways the string quartet is pre-eminently the dialectical form of instrumental music, the one most naturally suited to the activity of logical disputation and philosophical enquiry. Thus, where the composer of symphonies commands the means for textural enrichment beyond the call of his harmonic discourse, and where the concerto medium offers the further resource of personal characterization and drama in the individual-pitted-against-the-mass vein, the writer of string quartets must perforce concentrate on the bare bones of musical logic. The closely related characters of the four instruments, moreover, while they cover in combination an ample compass of pitch, do not lend themselves to indulgence in purely colouristic effects.

SIBELIUS STRING QUARTET 56 FULL

With four parts to play with, a composer working in anything like the classical key system has enough lines to fashion a full argument, but none to spare for padding. Ever since Haydn’s day the string quartet has been considered a prestigious form and represents one of the true tests of the composer’s art. The string quartet was developed into its current form by the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, with his works in the 1750s establishing the genre. The string quartet is one of the most prominent chamber ensembles in classical music, with most major composers, from the mid to late 18th century onwards, writing string quartets. From left to right-violin 1, violin 2, viola, celloĪ string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players-two violin players, a viola player and a cellist-or a piece written to be performed by such a group. 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).Figure 1. 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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