Towards the end of October 1920, the debt-ridden Sibelius was forced to embark upon yet another clutch of pot-boilers in an attempt to keep the wolf from the door.

In the first of the Six Bagatelles (1921) it is intriguing to encounter a tiny rising fifth motif which crops up again (identically harmonised) in the ‘Chorus of the Winds’ from his 1925 incidental music to The Tempest. Otherwise, there’s little to ignite the imag-ination either here or in the following year’s Eight Pieces (eventually printed by Fazer in Helsinki after having been rejected twice by the same London publisher).

Both the Five Romantic Pieces (1923) and Five Characteristic Impressions (1924) reveal a wider formal and expressive scope – and, as in the ‘Romance’ and ‘Evening Song’ from the former set, some fetching melodic inspiration. Pianistically speaking, the Cinq Esquisses (1929) are more idiomatic than anything else here, but one or two isolated glimpses of magic apart (above all in the impressionistic shadows of ‘Song in the Forest’), they make for thin listening.

Nearly an hour’s worth of innocuous listening, then, but dipping in is never less than a pleasure when Håvard Gimse plays with such consistent style and obvious affection. Very good sound, too, provided you don’t object to the occasional distant twitter of sparrows nesting in the rafters.