Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Six impromptus, op. 5
Sonate pour piano en fa dièse mineur, op. 67/1
Cinq morceaux, op. 75 "Les Arbres"
Dix pièces pour piano, op. 24

Eero Heinonen, piano

Sibelius délaissa le piano au profit du violon. Pour autant, son œuvre pour le clavier ne paraît guère anodine (notamment pour ce qui concerne la musique de chambre et les mélodies). L’écriture pianistique du compositeur finlandais est assez sobre. Il va à l’essentiel dans la quarantaine de partitions qu’il laisse à la postérité et dont le pianiste finlandais, éminent pédagogue par ailleurs, sait traduire la diversité des atmosphères. La plupart des pièces sont des miniatures et la grande forme sonate n’intéresse pas Sibelius qui préfère l’aphorisme ou la description d’arbres, les rythmes d’une danse paysannes. De fait, ce disque pétille d’intelligence, entre rêveries et pas de valses rudes. "L’invention mélodique de Sibelius est quasiment inépuisable" disait, admiratif, Richard Strauss. Il fascina tout autant Glenn Gould. Le pianiste canadien se passionna pour cet univers qui refuse les pages épiques, mais qui, en quelques mesures conduit son auditoire au bord d’une histoire sans fin. Cette musique n’est d’ailleurs pas exempte d’humour et les légendes nordiques se souviennent parfois de quelques formules de Schumann dont le piano si imprévisible semble avoir profondément marqué l’œuvre de Sibelius. Un bien joli récital qui donne envie d’approfondir davantage cet univers disparu sous la grandeur imposante du répertoire symphonique de l’auteur de "Finlandia". (Jean Dandrésy)

Accessible, haunting music by a 20thcentury master in an unfamiliar guise. A recipient of the Sibelius Society’s medal, Eero Heinonen has long been a champion of the composer’s neglected output for piano. With this recording he continues to make the case for music that does not easily give up its secrets but, in the right hands, sings with Sibelius’s unique voice. Sibelius was not himself an accomplished pianist, but he wrote for the instrument – at which he composed – throughout his career, and maintained that, while often overlooked, its time would come. In recent years his prophecy has come true, especially with the Op.75 suite of five pieces which he composed in 1914 and titled ‘The Trees’. They move from a Tchaikovskian melancholy common to much of his earlier piano output, through impressionist studies of light and darkness, to the kind of sombre, dissonant harmonies in the final piece (‘The Spruce’) which call to mind orchestral masterpieces such as En Saga and Tapiola. Rather than cherry-picking from a considerable output, Eero Heinonen has chosen to present four complete opus numbers which nevertheless encapsulate the range of Sibelius’s piano writing. In the Six Impromptus Op.5 of 1890-93 he successfully integrates elements of Finnish folk music within the idiom of fantasy inherited from Schubert and Chopin. The 10 Pieces Op.24 were written between 1895 and 1903 – formative years for the composer, in which he moved away from his Germaninfluenced training and discovered for himself a more distinctively Finnish voice, but in this context still within the genre of salon pieces. These are the works most directly comparable with Grieg’s Lyric Pieces. Then, before the Op.75 masterpieces, he wrote a trio of Sonatinas Op.67 in 1912, around the same time as the troubled Fourth Symphony. The first of them, as played here by Eero Heininen, shares some of the symphony’s austere idiom and introvert nature. Every gesture is pregnant with meaning, often mysterious and tentative, even in the apparently offhand opening movement.