Sibelius: The Complete Symphonies 1
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
As so often happens in the classical record business, Sir Colin Davis has been busily rerecording all of this music for RCA, with the London Symphony. And because he's an English conductor working with an English orchestra, the British critics are raving, as if these earlier, much better, and much less expensive versions didn't even exist. Well, ignore the hype. Not only does the Boston Symphony play rings around today's London Symphony Orchestra (Davis's current group), but they are much better recorded too. This first Sibelius cycle was a prime recommendation when it first came out, and it still is, plain and simple. --David Hurwitz
Customer Reviews
Good set, but not essential
Sibelius occupies an interesting place in music history. His music was more an extension of the 19th century than it was music of his own time. But even from that vantage point, it has considerable merit. Music of the late/post-Romantic period was often bloated (in the case of Mahler--sometimes hysterical). Sibelius on the other hand, was taut and not indulgent in the least. There is plenty of sinew here, and very little fat. For that reason, Sibelius should be appreciated by anyone with a love for good music.
Now, about this set (I'll speak about the entire set). It comes from a difficult period in the history of the Boston Symphony. These were the early years of the Ozawa tenure, when Colin Davis was Principal Guest Conductor. By the early 80s, Ozawa had imposed a real discipline on the orchestra--but these recordings where made before all that. In many of these readings there is a lot of sloppiness. The brass (especially in the 1st) are often quite sharp and blaring. This is not the refined BSO of earlier or later years.
The readings themselves are Sibelius from an English point of view. Imagine Sibelius played as if it's Vaughn-Williams. They're clean and musical and at their best, they present aspects of the pieces you may not have noticed in other recordings. But there is a quality of the music that I find missing here. The recordings of Saraste or Segerstam are better at bringing out the essential strangeness of Sibelius. To my ear, Davis' reading of the 6th is the best in this set--perhaps because that may be the sunniest of the series.
Is this collection a good introduction to the symphonies (and tone poems) of Sibelius? Aside from the price, I'd say no. Instead, I think they're better for the Sibelius lover who would like to hear this music from a little different point of view.
Where's the power?
This review focuses on the key movement for me (the fourth of the Second Symphony), and so will pay short shrift to the other works on this CD; my apologies to those who prefer to see a review weigh the entire CD. But my purpose in purchasing this CD was to find a reading of the Fourth movement that would capture what is for me its essential quality and character, which I can only compare to that of a sure-footed captain guiding his craft through a wailing storm (the Finnish people enduring Russian oppression on their way to independence?).
Sir Davis's reading of this movement is lush and introspective, at times slower than you would expect, and just never builds up that head of steam that made this work such a popular piece in the days when families crowded around their radios to hear great works performed in concert. It is precisely that image that always comes to me during great performances of this work, of kids listening in wonder as this impossibly big, grand, dramatic, and melodic work spilled into their living rooms and wakened in them wonder and awe. It took great courage for Sibelius to build much of this movement around a repeated set of ascending and descending notes; in lesser hands, it could have failed miserably, but in this case it not only works, it creates one of the most thrilling episodes in all of classical music.
I don't fault Sir Davis for his reading, but I would not at all call it definitive or even true to the dimensions of this work that have made it so appealing for so many people.
sublime
These two discs contain some of the most gorgeous symphonic music and awesome orchestral playing ever committed to disc.
Of Sibelius' seven symphonies, we have here the dark, Tchaikovskian First; the epic, majestic, forlorn Second; the austere, solemn, and noble Fourth; and the affable, complex, understated, and profound Fifth. These works capture something of the essence of the Nordic spirit as poignantly as the Dvorak symphonies do the Slavic, and are quite simply some of the most rewarding, fascinating works of art we have. They have, unfortunately, been largely overlooked since the rise of the current, passionate enthusiasm of the classical music world for the Mahler symphonies began in the 1960s; especially given the bargain, rerelease pricing of these two discs, then, you really mustn't pass on this opportunity to familiarize yourself with these masterworks.
The old Boston Symphony plays with a beautiful, effortless virtuosity that demonstrates why they were known as the dean of American orchestras. This was the orchestra whose timbre Copland, Barber, Piston, Schuman, and Berstein had in mind when they wrote their symphonic scores, and where the Chicago Symphony of the 70s was perhaps better-suited to the bombast of Mahler, Strauss, and Bruckner, the Boston Symphony must have been one of the best two or three orchestras in the world for these more subtle, understated scores (the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Vienna Philharmonic being the two other candidates that come immediately to mind).
A real treasure.
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