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The piano music of Jean Sibelius would, for the most part, be classified as rare; the prevailing critical opinion has been that, in the words of critic Tim Page, "most of his piano music might have been churned out by a second-rate salon composer from the 19th century on an off afternoon. " Leif Ove Andsnes has set out to excavate it, and lo, it turns out that it just awaited convincing performances. There are indeed some pieces of the salon sort here, but none is less than well-made, and there is just one arrangement of a non-pianistic work. The three larger works all bear traces of the world of Sibelius' orchestral masterpieces, in miniature scale, but full of the same musical ideas. The three-movement "Kyllikki, Op. 41, " is in Sibelius' epic mode, although compact at about 11 minutes.



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