248. Intimate Voices

The Concert - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Work for harp by Zabel performed by Emmanuel Ceysson, harp on January 6, 2008 and work for string orchestra by Sibelius, arranged by Frank Shaw, performed by A Far Cry on February 7, 2016.

• Zabel: Fantasy on Gounod's Faust
• Sibelius: String Quartet No. 2 "Voces Intimae" arr. Frank Shaw

Chamber music is one of the most intimate forms of classical music: quieter moments, smaller ensembles, and generally shorter works. On this podcast, we’ll listen to two works that play up that sense of intimacy: Zabel’s Fantasy on Gounod’s opera Faust, arranged for harp; and one of Sibelius’s few string quartets, subtitled “Voces Intimae”, or Intimate Voices.

Albert Heinrich Zabel was a German harpist and composer, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He performed for a time at the Berlin Opera—where he likely played the full Gounod score that inspired this work—and then moved to St. Petersburg to become solo harpist with the Imperial Ballet. We’ll hear the Faust fantasy performed by harpist Emmanuel Ceysson.

Next comes Jean Sibelius’s second string quartet, which the composer himself gave the subtitle “Intimate Voices,” writing it in the score above a striking, hushed three-chord progression in the central slow movement. The piece is his only mature string quartet, and one of the few chamber works he composed later in life. Many regard it as his chamber music masterpiece.