It wasn't so long ago that the only Sibelius quartet on disc was Voces intimae. Now the catalogue boasts no fewer than three accounts of the A minor, and the Voces intimae itself is available in five different versions. It is worth, perhaps, reminding you that before the Kullervo Symphony, Sibelius had hardly composed anything other than chamber music. After his breakthrough as an orchestral composer he continued to write music for domestic use, but into none of it did he pour ideas of any real significance or inspiration, with the sole exception of Voces intimae. It is as if the medium reminded him of the provincialism of his early years. He did toy with the idea of two further quartets at the time of the Fourth Symphony, part of which was originally thought of in the medium, but nothing came of these plans.
The Finlandia set collects all three quartets, together with the Voces intimae and must now be a first choice for Sibelians. True, the E flat Quartet of 1885 is of marginal interest. It is modelled on the Viennese classics and certainly shows that Sibelius knew his Haydn well. It is a well-schooled exercise and little more. Sibelius would probably not be best placed to see it in the public domain, but the A minor composed in 1889, his last year as a student in Helsinki, and the B flat, Op. 4 composed the following year, are a completely different matter. It is clear from the title-page of the Op. 4, which he calls Quartet No. 2, that Sibelius thought of the A minor as his first. Indeed, the A minor long remained listed as Op. 2 before being moved to the relative ignominy of a WoO (work without opus number) in one of the periodic purges he made of his work list. For long it was thought lost, only the first violin part having survived, but a complete set of parts was discovered in his brother Christian's library. Every time I hear it, I like it more: Erik Tawaststjerna rightly speaks of its ''fragile Nordic melancholy linked stylistically to Grieg''. It has something of the freshness of Dvorak and the innocence of Schubert. Sibelius obviously had ambivalent feelings towards the fine B flat Quartet too. He thought sufficiently well of it to allot it an opus number and allow it to remain in his worklist, but never published it and actively discouraged its performance. Its second movement bears a resemblance to a theme from Rakastava, which appeared in its original choral form four years later, in 1894.
As I mentioned in my first reviews, the playing of the Sibelius Academy Quartet is of the highest standard and the recordings are good. I see I complained first time round that the balance was a bit close and although that is true, it worried me a good deal less this time. How competitive is the newcomer from Ondine by its side? The Jean Sibelius Quartet are an excellent group who produce a refined, well integrated sound. In the closing section of the slow movement of the Voces intimae they produce a beautifully withdrawn, rapt quality, and I have to say I enjoyed their performances of both pieces. The leader has perhaps a less commanding personality than the rival Sibelius Academy Quartet (just compare the opening two minutes of the A minor and you will, I think, agree that the latter version is the more strongly characterized of the two). All the same, I prefer the Jean Sibelius's Voces intimae to many current rivals (the Guarneri on Philips, Sophisticated Ladies on BIS, and the Gabrieli on Chandos), though not to their countrymen. They are recorded in excellent digital sound, while the Finlandia is analogue (the remaining three quartets are digital). If you only want the Voces intimae, the Ondine record is worth considering, but I think the Finlandia package is generally the more desirable proposition.'