Customer Reviews

Sibelius: Luonnotar Orchestral Songs [Hybrid SACD]

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Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski has graced the concert and opera stage as a superior interpreter of the works of Strauss, Mozart, and Wolf, giving evidence of one of the rare voices that can soar over huge orchestras and maintains a tone of glowing beauty. Here she turns that focus to the songs of Jean Sibelius and the result is a CD collection that should gain her wide, glowing attention.

In collaboration with Leif Segerstam conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra Isokoski sings Sibelius' works for voice and orchestra with penultimate ease and beauty of tone and phrasing. Hers is a voice not only of lustrous timbre but one of great interpretative and technical intelligence. The recital includes some Sibelius songs written for voice and piano and here the orchestrations by such composers as Jussi Jalas are a bit thicker and less sensitive than the majority of the songs using Sibelius' own orchestration.

But there is not a weak band on this CD. The songs have a beauty that is suggestive of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler without being imitative. Isokoski simply overwhelms with her interpretations. The sound as engineered by Ondine is stunning. This is a recording that should garner prizes when it comes to Grammy Awards. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, November 06

If you know and like Soile Isokoski's pure, powerful, vibrant voice and respond to Sibelius's sparse, restless and often discomfiting orchestral idiom, this disc offers an irresistible combination of the two in unusual repertoire.

An icy wind blows through the sound-world of these songs: swirling snow and shifting mists infuse these myths and folk tales with an atavistic melancholy as if they present a reality older and truer than the modern world. I do not speak Finnish but as one married to a Finnish-American have a nodding familiarity with its sounds and rhythms and I can hear how important it is to have the five Finnish songs interpreted by a native speaker. Returning to Swedish, the language of educated Finns before the resurgence of nationalism, is almost like coming home in that it is recognisably Germanic compared with the intriguing Finno-Ugric group.

Isokoski has the best possible support in Finnish music specialist Leif Segerstam and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra; if you do not know their other Sibelius discs on Ondine let me urge you to sample above all their wonderful "Lemminkäinen Suite". It is diverting to hear echoes of Sibelius's better known works often in the introduction to individual songs and in typical Sibelian style different, fleeting moods succeed each other to match the development of events in the song. Not all here is grim; there are rhapsodic little gems like "The First Kiss" and Sibelius occasionally even skirts sentimentality in such songs as "Was it a dream?", but the prevailing mood is sombre. For anyone versed in the more conventional and familiar worlds of the Lied and mélodie, this represents a rewarding extension of scope into something rather different, even unique.

The recorded sound is especially fine: rich, warm and remarkably clear, with a perfect balance between voice and instruments.

The great Finnish singer Soile Isokoski proves her reputation in the mystical Luonnotar songs of Sibelius. She sings them with intensity and brings the listener into another mental world. You can't stay indifferent while listening to this touching music, sung by an artist who seems made for it. I was deeply impressed,
particularly by Isokoski, Sibelius and the poems itself that he used for his songs, but also by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leif Segerstam who seems to have a special affinity at least with Sibelius.
Strongly recommended!