Sibelius:
Six Impromptus
Op. 5

"""This has been a memorable project in many ways, not least because it is the first Sibelius recording which I have made in Finland. I was fortunate enough to collaborate with the Sibelius Museum in Turku and am extremely grateful to the Abo Stiftelsen in Finland for awarding generous funding, without which this recording would not have been possible. There was also a particularly happy co-incidence in that I was able to work with the Finnish-Estonian recording producer Enno Mäemets. To explain the significance of this, the first CD recording of Sibelius piano music I ever heard, and which made such a lasting impact on me, was by the Japanese pianist Izumi Tateno and recorded at the composer’s home, Ainola. I later discovered that this recording had been produced by Enno himself! I could hardly have envisaged that things would come together in such a serendipitous way when I had the initial idea of making a recording at the Sibelius Museum after giving a concert there in 2019. The selection of music on this album could form the basis for a concert programme and I wanted to combine a variety of styles from different creative periods of the composer’s life. My repertoire choices include some of Sibelius’s early works which are less well-known yet melodically captivating in themselves, the famous set of Six Impromptus Op. 5, a lighter collection of ‘8 Petits Morceaux’ Op. 99 and finishing with the 10 Pieces Op. 58, written in 1909 and arguably one of his greatest sets of piano pieces."" Joseph Tong"