Those who heard Sibelius improvise in the 1890s, at the time when he was doing it the most, were able to enjoy the greatest beauty that contemporary music can offer. It is a great pity that they were never written down. These wonderful fantasias kept a hold on you from the first note to the last chord and it was as if the listeners were intoxicated. When that was overcome, no one could have guessed that this Jean Sibelius who was improvising was not an eminent pianist. When Sibelius was improvising it was important for him to get a few glasses of, say, a Burgundy, one that he was very fond of, because he was a violinist and his technical shortcomings as a pianist produced a certain performance threshold. His skill at improvising on the instrument was good, as commented on by his pupil and friend Georg von Wendt: Sibelius was a fine piano composer, and while not a virtuoso pianist,( his instrument of choice was the violin) he could play the instrument very well, as commented upon by his contemporaries. The popularity and grandeur of his symphonies tend to outshine them. Sibelius wrote music for solo piano throughout his composing career, and the fact that it isn't very well known is no reflection of the quality of it. Most of his solo piano works are in sets, like the six Impromptus of opus 5. But he wrote music in many other genres as well, including music for solo piano. The seven symphonies he composed from 1900-1924 remain in the repertoire of many modern orchestras and have had a profound effect on composers. The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius is most well known for his music for orchestra.
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