Sibelius Piano Quintet in G minor.
String Quartet in D minor ‘Voces Intimae’
Coull Quartet; Roscoe
Somm SOMMCD096

Release date July 2010

Of the two works presented here, Sibelius’s Piano Quintet in G minor is the less-often performed, so it is good to see it appearing alongside the more familiar String Quartet in D minor. Martin Roscoe joins the Coull Quartet for the quintet and together they give a performance that is both confident and impassioned. At over 35 minutes, the quintet is a substantial work that demands a lot of its players. There are times where the writing suggests a force larger than five soloists and so it comes as no surprise that the sleeve-notes muse whether ‘it might have successfully undergone an orchestral transcription, much like Schoenberg made out of the Brahms G minor Piano Quintet’. At times there are glimmers of Sibelius’s tone-poems – just listen to the fourth movement (Scherzo) where the melodic line becomes enchantingly dance-like. Voces Intimae is the last of Sibelius’s string quartets and carries with it the added poignancy of knowing that the composer was undergoing treatment for throat cancer at the time of composition. The middle movement (Adagio di molto) is beautiful – both in interpretation here and in its writing, where rich and sumptuous harmony is allowed to dominate. A dramatic Allegretto gives way to the Allegro finale where the Coull Quartet conveys the movement’s drive and feeling of controlled frenzy. This disc is a worthy Gramophone Editor’s Choice and I expect I am not alone in hoping that the Coull Quartet bring us more Sibelius in the future.

Reviewed by Ruth Squire