Customer Reviews

Sibelius: Finlandia; Valse Triste; Tapiola; Der Schwan von Tuonela; The Swan of Tuonela

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Leave the hooey of the previous review aside. He's obviously got a point to make that has nothing to do with music and is wrong extra-musically as well. If it really matters what Karajan's politics were, read Osborne's excellent biography and learn that Karajan had ongoing difficulties with the Nazis culminating in his being frozen out of most work when he married a woman who was half Jewish.

All of that aside, these are magnificent readings. Karajan - as the composer himself recognized - has the idiom of this music down perfectly and finds perfect balance between mysticism and cool objectivity in The Swan of Tuonela, for example. If you want this selection of pieces, you won't find a better played or more sympathetically interpreted recording than this one.

The damning comment below is totally unjust and unreliable as the reviewer's view is completely clouded and distorted by his own personal dislike of Karajan as a person, that has nothing to do with either the conductor as musician nor content of this CD (what does Karajan's career strategy with Nazis, true or not, have to do with the recording!)

Karajan's reading of Finlandia is not a bombastic statement of Finnish nationalism, yet has weight and dignity with much emphasis on bass and the gloriously opulent sound from the orchestra.

The other three works are masterfully shaped and vividly captured with imagination. A fine addition to Karajan's Sibelius recordings.

These performances have the power and polish we expect from Von K and the Berliners.
My only gripe is that DGG is so stingy. Only 42 minutes of Music. Throw in the En Saga at about 9 minutes, or the Karelia Suite. It can be done!

I don't care what people may think of HvK as a person, mostly because if you think anything of him as a person it is probably based on incomplete knowledge and a lack of understanding history. That aside, these recordings - a little short though the CD may be - are the finest recorded performances of these works on record, anywhere. I think what the conductor understands here is a fine balance between immediacy and the ability to hold the listener in suspense, and the ability to use the Berlin Philharmonic to create majesty without losing the sparkle and magic of the genius of Sibelius. I think the tempos are spot on, and the engineering on this set is classic DG. What the sound lacks in bite (what you might hear on the Decca/Solti collaborations) it makes up for in sweetness - like silk. What you end up here with are lyrical, musical readings of the pieces that are each and every one - an absolute gem.

Werner Thärichen was the timpanist at the Berlin Philharmonic between 1948 and 1984, serving under both Furtwangler and Karajan. He was also a composer in his own right though as Alfred Brendel commented, the merits of his works were not always obvious. He wrote a book 'Furtwangler or Karajan' - a bit like comparing the Bismarck with the Tirpitz. Sadly, it has yet to be translated into English; his commentary in the Art of Conducting makes his allegiance clear.

Karajan was a serial re-recorder. The Thärichen Principle is based on the timpanist's comments on his '77 Beethoven Cycle: if the conductor had any new insights into the nine symphonies, he did not convey them to the orchestra. As such, it was a waste of time. While I disagree strongly with the application, the principle has life.

Off the top of my head, here are a dozen recordings where the Thärichen Principle is sovereign - Karajan manifestly failed to surpass the original(s): the 1983 Also Sprach Zarathustra; the 1987 Mozart K 543 & K 201; the 1983 Beethoven First and Second Symphonies; the 1984 Beethoven Four and Seventh Symphonies; the September 1983 Beethoven Ninth; the Brahms Third from 1988; the Brahms Fourth from 1988; the 1985 Pictures at an Exhibition; the 1989 Bruckner Seventh; the Vivaldi Four Seasons with A-S Mutter; the 1985 Le Mer; the Four Last Songs with Anna Tomowa Sintow. In certain instances, they are meritorious but the energy could have been invested elsewhere.

What of this digital Sibelius? Essentially it is his third and a half recording of the works (the half being his EMI / Philharmonia versions) Was the Penguin Guide (1990) justified in lauding it as disc as "reinforcing the feeling that this Berlin / Karajan partnership has never been equalled" in this repertoire?

Sadly, I think not. Above all, there is something fundamentally wrong with the recording that digital remasterings elsewhere have been unable to mitigate Nielsen: Symphony No. 4 / Sibelius: Tapiola ~ Karajan and Smetana: The Moldau/ Liszt: Les Preludes/ Sibelius: Finlandia and Pelleas et Melisande. No, it is not the infamous glare of early digital recordings. Rather, the recording itself is top heavy: the cellos, double-basses and timpany of the Berlin Philharmonic are malnourished in the end-product. I do not sense any diminishment in Karajan's powers (in Sibelius, he is always ex-cathedra); the Berliners are clearly in full flight - the failure came in the control-room. Karajan sounds like he has half an orchestra at his disposal.

Sibelius-wise, this 'Berlin/Karajan' partnership is best represented in the EMI alternative Sibelius: Finlandia; En Saga; Valse triste; Karelia Suite; The Swan of Tuonela. Generously, it comes with the En Saga and Karelia Suite in train. While it is an analogue recording, there is a fullness to the spectrum that is distinctly lacking in this digital remake - and EMI's remastering is a model of its kind.

In short the Thärichen Principle applies to this disc but for different reasons than usual, leaving us with a baker's dozen.

Deutsche Grammophone is a great label with quality in every aspect. This is a great cd. Herbert von Karajan and The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra sound in their element on this disc.

"Finlandia" is bright and energetic. The brass and strings work to clutch the listener with an anxious almost nationalistic grip. In "The Swan of Tuonela" the strings are flowing and compelling with the sustain Sibelius ascribed, meanwhile, the oboe creates a character with whom listeners feel for and care about. I love the way the last minute of the work fades and flickers away like life itself. "Valse Triste" is light, gratifying, and congenial. I do not care for "Tapiola" !!! The screeching strings tear at my ears, however, Sibelius did reach a new level of sound with this work.

Good day friends !

I have never liked Herbert von Karajan. And, not just because he was one of those Nazis in the musical biz who opted to stay in Hitler's Third Reich.

True, he was pretty much non-political, but the fact remains that he used the party as a tool towards furthering his musical career; compare to Arturo Toscanini's stand of courage in refusing to collaborate with the Fascisti in Italy, and openly defying Mussolini's henchmen on Italian soil before expatriating himself to America. Yes, von Karajan used politics as a vehicle. Anyone who's ever seen All About Eve knows what this is called: "Climbing over corpses on the way to the top." Tragically, unlike in Anne Baxter's case, the 7 million corpses in von Karajan's rise to stardom weren't figurative. The reason why I truly dislike him because he was probably the second most overblown, over-hyped and overrated conductor of all time (Leonard Bernstein wins first prize hands down). The only lasting legacy for which I'll credit von Karajan was introducing the world to the beautiful violin playing of Anne-Sophie Mutter and the conducting of Mariss Jansons.

I have heard many of Karajan's recordings, and I just don't understand what all the fuss is about; He tended to beat a mechanical tempo, was more antiseptic than Lysol, and his execution at times downright sloppy. I have only one recording by him that I actually like, and don't wince while listening to (Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic, Columbia Masterworks, ML-4299, mono). He was one of those overemotional conductors, very concerned with his hands fluttering aloft like seagulls, his eyes always closed like he was in some kind of trance or sexual ecstasy (compare this to Toscanini, who communicated to the orchestra his will so directly with those intense, fiery eyes). So, when I read in some alleged arbiter of musical taste, one of those audiophile review magazines, that Karajan was some kind of Sibelius expert, I just had to go out and find out what the big deal was.

With bated breath, I put this CD on the platter. Listening to the opening piece, Finlandia, was like viewing a Rembrandt painting. Painting by-the-numbers, that is.

Imagine, if you will, a Finlandia without power, dragging along at the speed of the little train that could. Imagine a Swan of Tuonela with all the grace of a half-deflated rubber duck in the bathtub. Envision a Valse Triste which, like its subject, is dead, but has no dreamy afterlife, or a Tapiola, whose tonal portrait of the Finnish forest god Tapio is so drab and lifeless that it could be used as state's evidence to prove Nietzsche's allegation that God is dead (excuse the mixed metaphor).

So much for Herbert von Karajan's "authoritative" reading of Sibelius. This small collection has all the inspiration of a Madelyn Murray O'Hair rally.

To sum up: Skip this one. If you want to hear a top-notch collection of Sibelius' tone poems, try one of the Beecham or Ormandy recordings.