Sibelius wrote over 120 short piano pieces over the course of his career, most published in sets such as the present one. They are mostly light, tuneful pieces in the "salon" manner, comparable to Edvard Grieg's "Lyric Pieces," though by no means of such consistently high quality. The Ten Pieces, Op. 24 were not originally intended to be a set, but were written sporadically over the years 1894 - 1903.

Many of these ten pieces are comparatively ordinary, but there are exceptions, such as the "Nocturne" (No. 8), whose unsettled, obsessive quality evokes to some extent the characteristic Sibelius style. Likewise the opening Impromptu; its storminess and sense of foreboding are recalled in the "Barcarola" (No. 10). And there is a quirky sweetness about the outer sections of the somewhat hackneyed D flat "Romance" (No. 9), perhaps the best known of these ten pieces.

One gets the impression here and elsewhere in Sibelius's piano output that he is not quite comfortable writing for the instrument, although the Op. 24 set is rather more pianistically idiomatic than some of his later works. There is a slight awkwardness about even so fine a piece as the "Romance" (No. 2) which, despite some thickness of texture, is quite a haunting piece which covers a fair amount of emotional ground in its seven minutes. All in all, Op. 24 is one of the better Sibelius piano collections.



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