Six Impromptus

The Six Impromptus (in German: Sechs Impromptus), Op. 5, is a collection of compositions for piano written in 1893 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.

Impromptu No. 1
The First Impromptu is in G minor. Marked Moderato, it has a duration of about two minutes.

Impromptu No. 2
The Second Impromptu is also in G minor. Marked Lento – Vivace, it has a duration of about two minutes.

Impromptu No. 3
The Third Impromptu is in A minor. Marked Moderato (alla marcia), it has a duration of about three minutes.

Impromptu No. 4
The Fourth Impromptu is in E minor. Marked Andantino, it has a duration of about two minutes.

Impromptu Nos. 5 and 6
The Fifth Impromptu is in B minor. Marked Vivace, it has a duration of about 3.5 minutes, The Sixth Impromptu, on the other hand, is in E major; marked Comodo, it lasts about two minutes. In 1893, Sibelius reused themes from Nights of Jealousy (Svartsjukans nätter, JS 125)—an 1893 melodrama for narrator, vocalise soprano, and piano trio to poems by J. L. Runeberg–for Nos. 5–6 of the Six Impromptus. In 1894, he combined the fifth and sixth impromptus into an arrangement for string orchestra and titled the new piece Impromptu.

Reception
Robert Layton dismisses the Six Impromptus as "for the most part ... feeble and uninventive".

Discography
The Finnish pianist Erik T. Tawaststjerna made the first studio recording of the complete Six Impromptus in 1979 for BIS; of these, Nos. 3–4 were world premieres. The remaining four pieces had been recorded earlier, with premieres as follows: No. 1–2 by the Swedish pianist Stig Ribbing on His Master's Voice (HMV 7 EBS 5, 1956); No. 6 by the German pianist Horst Minkofski-Garrigues for Telefunken-Decca for (MG 4468, 1968); and No. 5 by the Japanese pianist Izumi Tateno on EMI (5E 063–34472, 1971). The sortable table below lists, in addition to the aforementioned Tawaststjerna traversal, other commercially available recordings of the complete Six Impromptus:

Notes, references, and sources

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 * Sources