Customer Reviews

Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7

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

 

 

I always loved Karajan's recordings of symphonies 4-7 from the 1960's, and I still hold them in highest regard. However, I feel that it's important to hear more than one version of Sibelius's later symphonies. And this recording of 6,7, and Tapiola with Osmo Vanska/Lahti is just awesome. You hear the woodwinds and strings with such well defined clarity, and everything is so naturally phrased. Seems true to the spirit of the music, though again, it's good to hear more than one version. I do think #6 is nearly perfect on all counts. #7 is top-notch, and the Tapiola is excellent. If you are a first-time fan of Sibelius's latter work, this is a great place to start. This digital recording is outstanding.

My benchmark in the sixth has always been the early 60s Karajan performamnce, closely followed by Beecham's late 40s version. However, this has now changed! Vanska provides a reading of the sixth that is almost ideal in its combination of atmosphere and textual clarity. Never before has this work sounded so true to the composer's description as a cocktail of pure spring water. The scherzo in particular is outstanding with its unforced rhythm to the fore.

The seventh is, frankly, less remarkable, but is still a performance to be reckoned with. Again, Vanksa and his excellent Lahti players are at their best in the faster scherzando section towards the end of the work. The CD is rounded off by a very fine and (again) atmospheric version of Tapiola, with some superbly evocative wind playing. However, for Tapiola I would ultimately take Karajan's 1965 DG version to the desert island.

The sound quality is equivalent to the best from this source, being full and sonorous, and having a believable sense of space. Highly recommended.

I have greatly enjoyed Vänskä's recordings with Lahti, and his Sibelius discs are all in a class by themselves. But this one is special among the special, and an ideal place to being exploring these works, Sibelius in general, or Vänskä's recorded output. The crystaline purity of the lines of the 6th, the deep intellegence in how it all comes together... the 6th emerges as a spectacular score, every bit as dramatic as the more outgoing 7th. Another thing interesting about this disc is how the pieces play off one another. Distinct in sound, mood, and construction, they balance each other well and make for a rounded listening experience.

Among my favorite recordings are several recordings of Sibelius, including recent traversals of the complete symphonies by Colin Davis and Paavo Berglund. I keep those at home, while at work I have the box set by Abravanel, the highlight of which for me is the disk that contains symphonies 5, 6, and 7. If you are getting the impression that I just can't seem to get enough Sibelius, maybe you are right, because I could not resist purchasing this fine BIS disk that contains the final two symphonies plus the late tone poem, Tapiola. What a wonderful program! And not only is it a wonderful program, but it is a program that is wonderfully served by the musicians and production crew. The Lahti group has a sound somewhere between the large lushness of the London Symphony (Davis) and the small intimacy of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Berglund), a sound well suited for these three lushly intimate works.

I can still recall seeing a painting in a student exhibition at Brigham Young University back in 1976, a painting that looked something like the cover photo on this disk. Below the painting was a note from the artist explaining that he had been inspired by Sibelius's Tapiola, and as I enjoyed the painting and found myself intrigued by the artist's explanation, I vowed to obtain a recording of the work, and I have owned several versions over the years.

What is especially noteworthy about this BIS recording is that it sets this work not with other tone poems, but with these two wonderful symphonies, making this an absolutely indispensable CD for the Sibelius lover, a disk to be played over and over again on long winter evenings for consolation from the cold, and on summer evenings for the promise of cooler weather to come. (By the way, for a contrasting interpretation of Tapiola, which Vänskä on the BIS disk takes a fairly typical 17:22 to perform, you must hear Segerstam on Chandos, who stretches out Tapiola for more than 21 minutes--a strange but powerful performance on a disk that also includes the Symphony No. 3 and Scene with Cranes, Chandos CHAN 9083.)

As a classical music listener who usually prefers 1950s Darmstadt Modernism and after, I never thought myself especially likely to get into the symphonies of Jean Sibelius. After all, Sibelius held on to his Romantic idiom long after the cutting edge of new music had moved on to the musical impressionism of Debussy or the expressionism of the Second Viennese School. But upon discovering Sibelius' work, I was struck by how organic his music is, based on little cells which constantly develop in a fashion that looks much more ahead to later composers such as Per Norgard than back towards the tradition of angsty, bloated and fossilized Romantic symphonies. The Symphony No. 5 was the first in this bold new style, and its ecstatic unveiling of its "swan hymn" is gripping, but it is the last two symphonies which show a mastery of this form.

Of Sibelius' mature symphonies, the Sixth (1923) is the most airy and gentle. Delicate string textures and woodwinds open the work, sustaining a lovely pastel-coloured revery through the end of the first movement. The following three movements beef the music up with impulses of brass and percussion, but the efervescent core of the work is never entirely lost. This is probably my favourite of the late symphonies, and I can't believe that it is the least performed. With the Seventh (1924), Sibelius' organic way of composition had become so fluent that he was able to cast its entire 25-minute span in a single movement, where each rhythmic upset seems to be driven naturally by the previous. This is the most brass-heavy of the mature symphonies. "Tapiola" (1926) is a tone poem, but is often grouped with the symphonies because of its scope and technical achievements. I think it a rather frightening work, full of suspense and foreboding which is never broken by idyll like other Sibelius orchestral works.

The cycle recorded on BIS where Osmo Vanska leads the Lahti Symphony Orchestra is, in my opinion, the best around. Not only are the performances flawless and informed by Sibelius' own Nordic tradition, but the sound quality is superb. However, instead of buying these individual discs, it's much more economical to simply get the later BIS release with all the symphonies and "Tapiola" together on four discs.

The Sibelius Sixth Symphony is a personal favorite. Its ingratiating understated fleetness, especially in the poco vivace third movement with the winds skipping over a cushion of strings, just does something to enliven one's soul and outlook. As with the other recordings I've heard from Vänskä and his native Finnish Lahti players, the Sixth receives a cool reading that never exceeds the dynamic and expressive bounds of the Sibelian idiom -- I like it here! Though the Lahti Symphony is a relatively small band, the recording is so clear and with such a wide dynamic range that one feels the musical equivalent of Finland's spring splendor. This might just be my new favorite recording of the Sixth.

The Seventh Symphony is a different animal entirely. It's a mostly austere work, blending elements of late Romanticism with the prevailing new twentieth century Modernism which Sibelius could never quite embrace. It's in a single movement, but with three distinguishing parts all ingeniously melded into a seamless whole. Many consider this to be as seminally defining to twentieth century music as the likes of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or Debussy's La Mer -- I can see that -- but it's never become a staple of the concert hall. As another reviewer elsewhere quipped, it might be that the work is simply greater than it can be performed. Of the several recordings of it I have, no two sound quite alike.

The popular tone poem Tapiola receives the same cool approach that seemingly permeates Vänskä/Lahti's recorded cycle. It's difficult to recommend this CD to a novice listener, especially with many fine and more reasonably priced options, but it's compellingly performed music nonetheless. What the smallish Lahti orchestra lacks in sheer lushness, such as heard in the contemporary recordings from Leif Segerstam and the Helsinki Philharmonic on the Ondine label, it certainly makes up for with committed playing.

All of the Sibelius symphonies that BIS recorded with Vanska suffer from the same obstacle to giving them a high recommendation. The Lahti Symphony Orchestra -- which for some unfathomable reason is praised for its playing by the unreliable David Hurwitz -- sounds thin and ordinary, as you'd expect a provincial Finnish orchestra to sound. I am mystified why every single amazon review that I've read, as well as the Gramophone, dresses mutton as lamb. The Sibelius Sixth features some refined woodwind writing, often in pairs, and there's no comparison between the good-enough playing of the Lahti woodwinds and the first chairs of Berlin, Vienna, New York -- substitute any notable ensemble that has recorded the work.

What makes this defect less crippling is Vanska himself, who has risen to be our leading Sibelius conductor. He is much better supported in concert with his Minnesota Orch. (he brought them to Carnegie Hall in a program that featured both the Sixth and Seventh) but on this CD one can't miss the freshness of his approach. This is especially apparent in the buoyancy and transparent textures of the Sixth, a work that for decades was all but the sole possession of Beecham -- even great Sibelians like Karajan and Bernstein seem heavy-handed by comparison. Although often described as a pastoral symphony, the Fourth is enigmatic enough not to contain conventional melodies or development, and its sudden anticlimax of an ending has always baffled audiences. the music enters and leaves on a breeze, floating its mottoes like bubbles, and Vanska turns this evanescence into a virtue, which is rare.

The Seventh is much easier to accept as a masterpiece, and although the composer's harmonies have advanced since the ever-popular Sym. #2, the sound and mood of the Seventh feels very similar to me -- the second is an extended heroic work, the Seventh an abbreviated one, and subject to halting hesitations. I favor a strong, extroverted reading of the kind delivered by Karajan and Bernstein, but vanska's quiet, reflective way is also convincing on its own terms. the thinness of the Lahti sound prevents him from achieving grandeur, so this is the best approach. perhaps. When called for there is rhythmic excitement, but the sumptuous brasses of Berlin and New York are noticeably absent.

I can't diminish the second-rate quality of the Lahti's playing, yet this is a strong installment in Vanska's cycle, especially for the Sixth.