Jean Sibelius:
String Quartets in E flat major, A minor, B flat major and D minor ‘Voces intimae’
Breitkopf & Härtel Jean Sibelius Werke SON 634
Edited by Pekka Helasvuo and Tuija Wicklund

Review by Andrew Barnett & Ian Maxwell

Some years ago it was widely believed that Sibelius wrote only one string quartet – Voces intimae – a work that remained a relative rarity on international concert programmes, although it was held in high regard by connoisseurs of the genre. In 1931 Cecil Gray wrote that it ‘ranks with the finest achievements of Sibelius’s middle period […] beautifully written for the medium and exceedingly effective in performance’… Click here to continue reading this article.