Martin Roscoe - Jean Sibelius: Piano Quintet in G Minor, JS 159 & String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 56 (2014)

Sibelius was in his mid-twenties when he travelled to Berlin for further studies after graduating from Helsinki University, in the autumn of 1889, and it was there that he composed his Piano Quintet. This was not a particularly happy period in Sibelius’s life and inspiration had all but dried up. Even at this early stage he was beginning to have a drink problem that was to stay with him for much of his life, and his freewheeling lifestyle had left him badly in debt. It was Busoni who helped pull him out of his temporary loss of confidence by travelling with him the following November to Leipzig to give a performance of a piano quintet by one of Sibelius’s friends. This helped fire Sibelius with enthusiasm to finish his own quintet the following April.