Back in the early 1960s,
I was lucky to be able to share my youthful
musical enthusiasm with a few schoolmates.
I say ‘lucky’ because, for one thing,
fans of the classics were as thin on
the ground then as they seem to be now.
For another, we lacked the disposable
income of the youth of today. Our LP
treasures were relatively hard-won so,
once the initial thrill of a new acquisition
had worn off, after a dozen or so playings,
the disc would do the rounds of our
little group.
Thus it was that one
day, a chum handed me an ‘Ace of Clubs’
record with the admonishment, ‘Do you
want to try this? It sounds a bit, well,
modern - but it’s not all that
bad, really.’ After my regular two hour
slog of homework (we didn’t get all
that much - I was ever a slow worker),
I put it on the turntable of my record
player, which was not quite a Dansette,
but as near as dammit a Dansette.
Three-quarters of an
hour later, I was scraping the top of
my head off the front-room ceiling,
an activity I have undertaken many times
since, frequently on account of this
composer. No prizes for guessing who
but, at the time, I’d never even heard
of Sibelius, much less heard
any of his music. Well, back then he
wasn’t exactly fashionable, was he?
Neither was I aware that the recording
of the Second Symphony, by the
LSO under Anthony Collins, was a classic.
Admittedly the field was hardly as crowded
as it is now, but it can still hold
its head up, even this far down the
line.
What puzzles me now,
more than ever, is how music like this
can ever be ‘out of fashion’. Sibelius
is one of those rare composers with
an utterly unique - and unmistakable
- voice. What amazes me now, more than
ever, is how somebody can take the same
orchestra of instruments, the same tonal
system, the same traditions and conventions,
and squeeze out of it all something
so ‘completely different’. If you think
of all the ‘unmistakables’ that you
can and pile them up, then I’ll guarantee
that Sibelius will end up pretty near
the top of the pile.
What’s his secret?
I wish I knew! All I know is that when
I see images of snow-encrusted trees,
or of glass-still lakes nestling amid
glacial mountains, or of clear water
bustling beneath fragile ice, or - most
of all - when I ponder on Stravinsky’s
potent memory of ‘the (Russian) Spring,
which began in an instant, and was like
the whole Earth cracking’, some fragment
of Sibelius will immediately thread
its way through my mind. It also works
the other way. As I listen to Sibelius,
the music implacably conjures the images.
I am sure that I was
never taught to connect the two,
because my memory of the association
predates my knowledge of the composer
and his background. I can remember the
youthful disdain with which I reacted
to the ‘seafaring’ description of the
First Symphony on the sleeve
of another Collins ‘Ace of Clubs’. What’s
more, I know I’m not alone in this feeling;
far from it. This betokens no great
perceptiveness on my part, or on the
part of anyone else who registers this
association. No - it just goes to underline
the phenomenal potency of Sibelius’s
creations.
I would love to know
if Sir Colin Davis is amongst our number,
because on these recordings he realises
the music in a very particular way.
It’s as though he were trying to use
the LSO to ‘pull focus’ on images, such
as I described, cycling round in his
own head. We shall of course always
be grateful to Karajan for his pioneering
stereo recordings, made mostly for DGG,
though I do, in particular, recall an
LP of the Second Symphony he
made for EMI. However, for me Karajan’s
failing, albeit a worthy failing, was
his obsession with beauty of sound for
its own sake. Whilst this served many
composers well, it didn’t do a right
lot for Sibelius. Half of the time,
it is like looking at the snow and ice
through a double-glazed window, from
the cosy comfort of a fireside chair.
Davis, in a manner
of speaking, dumps us - inadequately
attired - into the midst of all the
snow and ice. He compels us, in the
words of Offenbach’s gendarmes, to ‘commune
with nature face to face’. You know
what? It’s very stimulating - but what’s
his formula? I am pretty certain it’s
that, instead of treating Sibelius as
what my old school-pal called ‘modern’,
Davis treats him as a ‘classical’
composer. Alright, Davis is not alone
in this, but where he stands out from
the crowd is in the thoroughness and
consistency of his interpretative treatment
of the music. Pop on any of the CDs
in this set, pick a track at random,
and without fail abundant evidence blazes
from the loudspeakers. I found that
I gave up noting it down, because the
word ‘again’ was starting to use up
too much ink.
The key word is ‘clarity’.
Davis homes in like a hawk on clarity,
both of line and of articulation. These
performances, quite literally, opened
my ears to the truly linear nature
of Sibelius’s writing. Many examples
of what I had formerly thought to be
‘impressionistic’ textures suddenly
become the microscopic intertwining
and interacting of recognisable threads.
Davis’s magical magnifying-glass, enabled
by the pin-sharp articulation he asks
for - and gets from - the LSO, brings
all these fine structures into sharp
relief. The textures are still there,
of course, the difference being that
now you know a lot more about what makes
them tick.
This is all fine and
dandy, but is it dry and academic as
a consequence? Far from it. Davis, let’s
not forget, has an enviable reputation
with the music of the arch-romantic
Berlioz. Perhaps it’s no coincidence
that Berlioz, when he wasn’t busy blowing
the lid off some gothic cathedral with
crate-loads of sonic dynamite, displayed
a healthy respect for the niceties of
the fine line and detailed articulation.
It strikes me that, in a sense, Davis
is just re-applying the skills he has
acquired from his legendary Berlioz
performances and recordings.
With both composers,
Davis seems to adopt the old adage:
‘Take care of the pennies, and let the
pounds take care of themselves’. I choose
my adage with cunning! British readers
will, if they’re old enough, recall
that ‘pounds’ can mean money - or weight.
A conductor who takes care of the musical
pennies is pretty well destined, without
further investment, to get the musical
pounds right, because composers build
even their weightiest moments by piling
up penny-sized details. On the other
hand, a conductor who concentrates solely
on making an impact will almost certainly
make a right hash of the detail.
For example, take the
start of Sibelius’s First Symphony.
After the clarinet’s soliloquy has run
its course, the strings enter on a thrilling
tremolando. Right? Wrong! Not in this
recording, they don’t. Davis elicits
a rhythm, apparently embedded within
the tremolando. It’s no big deal in
itself, but it’s a big enough deal to
make your ears prick up, and by the
time you’ve heard the set, Davis has
made it well worth that small effort.
Another thing that
quickly becomes apparent is the elasticity
Davis brings to the tempi, putting me
in mind of Jochum’s famous way with
Bruckner. However, Davis is by no means
acting on whim: even in this symphony,
the scherzo is taken ruler-straight
- and at a speed that manages to be
exciting without reducing the LSO to
garbled gabbling. Yet, in general, the
more flexibility Sibelius builds in
to his music, using his famous device
of ‘multiplication and division within
a set pulse’, the correspondingly less
freedom Davis allows himself. This is
particularly true of the symphonies
but, perhaps surprisingly, in this respect
the other works in the set are often
handled with relative circumspection.
I have long been waiting
for someone to make a stereophonic recording
that ‘does’ the timps. in this movement
the way that Collins did back in the
early 1950s. Sadly, I’m still waiting.
In compensation, Davis otherwise misses
nothing of the craggy grandeur and pastoral
stirrings, giving us yet another advantage
of his meticulous approach, that of
revitalising all the colour inherent
in the music. At the end of the symphony,
having electrified us in the finale’s
central allegro and inspired awe in
a massive and majestic reprise of the
‘big tune’, Davis bids the Earth open
and swallow the music whole. This is
really impressive.
Davis takes a noticeably
less ‘bendy’ view of the Second Symphony.
He allows the first movement to make
its point through the clarity of detail,
whilst maintaining a sense of logic
amidst the twists and turns of the second
movement’s icy blasts and hints of Spring.
Taking the scherzo a nadge slower that
your average ‘Flash Harry’, Davis leaves
room for the important details to register,
stressing the square chords to make
the contrast, and wringing tears from
the tender trio. The sudden intrusion
of the returning scherzo is a bit scrappy,
but then I’ve never heard it otherwise.
I guess Sibelius must have written it
that way?
The famous transition
to the finale slips by with commendable
slickness, but then Davis underlines
the cross-rhythms in a superbly-wrought
build-up. Neither does he gloss over
the lumps and bumps in the accompaniment
to the ‘big tune’, which nevertheless
expands gloriously. Again, you can feel
his flexibility of tempo, teasing the
line, and giving the succeeding string
passage a wonderful feeling of arabesque.
The long march treads dead steadily.
Davis’s approach to the reprise is particularly
thrilling: he picks up speed, generating
considerable momentum, so that when
he applies the brakes a substantial
amount of energy translates from kinetic
to potential. Such inertial forces need
careful handling, and Davis proves no
mean rival to Herr Schumacher! Curiously,
the final peroration lacks that crucial
‘take-off’ point - there’s no extra
‘lift’: the music just progresses grandly
to its sublime conclusion. Given the
context of the set as a whole, I am
left with a sneaking feeling that it’s
I, not Davis, who has missed something.
I really must listen to this one again,
and soon.
The Third Symphony
has been many a conductor’s downfall.
I find it puzzling why nobody seems
to know how to tackle it convincingly,
because in many ways this is Sibelius’s
‘Spring Symphony’. Emotionally it is
the least complicated of all, in particular
being relatively free from the dark
undercurrents - or even ‘over-currents’!
- of its neighbours. Most of the time
the music is - or should be - dancing,
dreaming or marching cheerfully with
it knapsack on its back. So, somebody
please tell me, what is the problem?
Sir Colin comes nearer
than most to unleashing this happy beast.
The strings set off at a teasing trot,
soon joined by equally perky woodwind.
The first climax, replete with resplendent
horns, is hair-raising. A bit later,
Davis pares the sound down to the merest
whisper and pulls back on the reins,
so that the flute entry sounds lost
and lonely - neatly complementing the
symmetrically-placed passage of halting,
timid pizzicati.
The second movement’s
marking, of ‘andantino, quasi allegretto’,
speaks of the need for a fine balance.
Davis hits it dead centre (probably!),
and shades the dynamics a treat. The
finale starts off all spick and span.
Bending the tempo every which way but
‘loose’ and bringing out the sudden
jagged eruptions, Davis gives the music
a great feeling of combustibility. In
the closing processional, I did wonder
if his interpretation of Sibelius’s
‘allegro (ma non tanto)’ might be insufficiently
‘non tanto’, as his gradual acceleration
works up a fair head of steam. However,
for all the excitement generated, in
the home straight it somehow loses the
plot a little. Mind you, it is only
‘a little’ - I suspect that the overall
high standard may have cranked up my
expectations over much.
It is, perhaps, in
the grim Fourth Symphony where
Davis’s approach comes most directly
into opposition with that of Karajan.
This is the one symphony where Sibelius
stirs his fragmentary ingredients and
they don’t, by and large, ‘gel’. Davis
clinically, but far from aridly, exposes
the commonality of the first two movements.
The first is brooding and, in spite
of the increasing activity within the
set tempo, static. The second is jolly,
bumbling along busily. Both, though,
appear disjointed, fractured music that
is bewildered by stark brass interjections.
Nevertheless there is - has to be -
structure, a logical line, and this
Davis tracks unerringly.
He is equally unerring
in the third movement. In his hands
‘the patient is dead, in spite of the
beating of the heart’, which just about
sums up how Sibelius must have been
feeling at the time. Davis ensures that
this persists even through the impassioned
climax, which shines like a brilliant
spotlight into a black abyss, but then
brings out the sun at the start of the
finale. Full of bright tinklings and
chirrupings, it’s like emerging from
the bleakness of winter into the full
bloom of snow-melting spring. The almost
Ivesian climax, themes clashing and
bashing into one another, is articulated
with a sure hand, a control that runs
just as surely into the final victory
of Gloom.
Uncompromised by any
gratuitous beauty of sound, this performance
is a salutary experience. Davis, clear-sighted
in the gloom, makes you uncomfortably
aware of a soul trying to keep its body
together, and not really succeeding.
To ensure that nobody,
but nobody, mistakes this for unreservedly
‘sunny’ music, Davis emphasises the
timpani rolls at the start of the Fifth
Symphony. Similarly, following the
coiling of the woodwind, the strings
are given a juddering impact so that,
even before the first big crescendo,
it’s obvious that this ‘ain’t no sunny
day’. That ever-present linear clarity
brings out the stirring strings, whirring
fretfully beneath the slowly turning
winds. The key climax is given tremendous
weight - and feeling of a weight lifted,
with the fanfares of trumpets and horns
in the ‘scherzo’ delightfully distanced.
Davis’s grip on the inexorable nature
of this music is utterly electrifying.
He adopts what seems
to me to be the ‘perfect’ basic tempo
for the dew-dropping ostinato theme
of the second movement, where his differentiation
of the lines is exceptional. Obviously
regarding Sibelius’s tempo marking as
implying variability, Davis accelerates
into the movement’s climactic core,
then decelerates out of it. Is this
right? I don’t know. Neither do I care
much, because it works! Not for
one second are you allowed to imagine
that this music is in any way ‘relaxing’.
This makes it all the more curious that
Davis ‘rounds off’ the movement with
a cadential stress, when it is surely
the composer’s intention that it should
just stop in mid-flight, as though snipped
by scissors.
The finale seethes
with vitality, expanding energetically
through the famous ‘striding’ passage
- which is taken strictly ‘in tempo’.
I’m glad Davis didn’t fall into that
particular trap. Yet again his meticulous
attention to detail surfaces, this time
in the changed tone of the whirring
strings when they resurface. ‘Clarity’
also etches the image of the coda, as
a sheer rock-face with sharp, nasty
edges that tear at the flesh. The moment
of triumph at the summit is tragically
brief: the final chords are hard as
nails and sledgehammer brutal. This
is a thought-through performance of
a very high order.
More than once I’ve
heard the Sixth described as
‘euphonious’, and it seems that the
music is on the whole sufficiently ‘non-combative’
for an interpretation to carry the opening
euphony right through to the end. There
are no such shenanigans with Davis.
The pin-sharp tip of his baton sees
to that, as he uses it to winkle some
coy intrusions of ominous discord snuggled
in the cushion-cosy opening passage.
What’s more, he keeps it that way. Emerging
from the first, brief climax, dancing
and prancing at a fair old lick, he
goes on to elevate the surges of deeper
emotive substance inherent in the long
brassy notes overlaying the bustle.
By the end of the movement, noble horns
yield to chill strings. All is tense,
expectant, probing - those ominous discords
have borne fruit.
This symphony sets
up a particular challenge through its
unusual distribution of tempo markings:
‘allegro molto moderato’, ‘allegro moderato’,
‘poco vivace’, and ‘allegro molto’.
Should the conductor treat these individually,
each in the context of its movement,
or should he use them to ‘engineer’
a cumulative impression? Knowing Sibelius’s
predisposition to playing games with
tempo, we’d all (I’m sure) conclude
the latter. Quick poll - and no cheating!
- can you name me one performance that
actually does sit up on its hind legs
and bark this at you? Right now, you’re
probably expecting me to tell you that
Davis provides the ‘performance that
barks’. Sorry folks - he doesn’t! However,
he does relate the tempi of all four
movements. To be more exact, as near
as dammit, he runs a fixed beat right
through the symphony. Judicious rubato
notwithstanding, he scarcely wavers
from this metronomic pulse. If I were
to be unkind, I’d say that Davis was
just sitting back and letting Sibelius
do all the work, but of course there’s
more to it than that. Davis, who thus
far has shown himself to be ready, willing
and able to ‘bend’, knows just when
to hold off.
Other than that, he’s
firing on all cylinders: his second
movement starts from where the first
left off, hesitancy giving way to dancing.
The music vacillates weirdly between
youthful vigour, unsettling oscillations
and gloomy impositions. Davis, far from
disguising this, leans on these dissonant
elements, bringing out the implicit
stark, unnerving quality. So it goes
on - the third movement’s contrasts
are even starker than the second’s,
and from the initially stately demeanour
of the finale Davis soon whips up a
storm. More than anyone I can recall,
he brings to the close a feeling of
the end looking back at the beginning
looking forward.
The rising scale that
starts the sublime Seventh Symphony
also made by ears sit up - there was
a distinct offset of the string parts,
something that I’d never noticed before.
It’s that ‘clarity’ again. Davis’s needle-pointing
of the evolving harmony pricks out the
pungency of the dissonances. There is
a notable mobility which, given the
timing of over 22 minutes, says much
for his subtle moulding of the pulse
in the opening adagio - ‘leisurely’
does not necessarily mean ‘slow’. Davis
is careful to distinguish between the
natures of Sibelius’s ‘seamless transitions’
in this and the Sixth. In the
Sixth, these are ‘rigid’, wrought
by multiplying or dividing note values
within the basic pulse. Here, they are
more ‘plastic’, or even ‘elastic’.
There are a couple
of blips. Just after the first majestic
climax, for example, there seems to
be a little stumble, but nothing much.
Davis’s management of the music’s fabric
fully realises Sibelius’s ambition to
‘integrate all the parts’. In his hands,
the music really feels like shaded valleys
and flashing streams running between
vast and awesome crags. It all culminates
in the stunning climax that cuts off,
leaving the violins stranded aloft with
no option but to come back down the
ladder ascended at the outset.
The coda is marvellously
well-forged, almost floating in as the
tone swells. The final brass chord is
faded down, allowing the violins’ leading
note to penetrate like a lance of sunlight
cleaving mountain summits, then made
to grow again to furnish the burnished
blaze of sunset fire. Not bad at all.
On top of the seven
‘proper’ symphonies we are given a Kullervo
Symphony to die for. Never mind
that Sibelius the obsessive perfectionist
rather lost faith with this youthful
extravagance, let’s just be thankful
that he didn’t drown it at birth. Although
the young composer, still relatively
easy meat for his Romantic influences,
mixed a rather richer orchestral pudding,
Davis cooks it in the same oven he uses
for the leaner meat. Taking it at face-value,
he draws some sumptuous playing from
the LSO and relishes the heady brew,
but he doesn’t sink the detail into
the plush pile any more than he lingers
over-much or pulls the music about wilfully.
Sibelius’s lines may be less complex
and looser, but Davis still gives them
all their due. This is not to suggest
that he underplays the drama - the first
movement coda packs enough wallop to
fell an elephant.
Equally, he finds plenty
of whimsy in and amongst the light-footed
marching tread of the second movement,
and screws up the menace when required.
The third movement is launched at a
cracking pace with bags of ‘snap’ -
I’d defy anyone to keep their feet still
here! The men of the LSO Chorus are
mightily impressive, bold as brass,
solid as soldiers, lusty of voice, and
nigh-on ideally balanced in the sound-field.
The pleasantly youthful voices of the
two soloists are at first given little
more to do than ‘gabble-recitative’,
but later on Hillevi Martinpelto takes
full advantage of an extended lyrical
passage, her voice blossoming - firm,
not too vibrant, and brimming with emotion.
The sudden re-entry of the baritone
is suitably startling, Karl-Magnus Fredriksson’s
voice is all at once bigger, sterner,
more powerful and dominating. Both soloists
are placed ‘in front’ of the orchestra
(big tick), but nowhere near so close
that you can feel their breath (even
bigger tick!).
The remaining two movements
are no less effective. Kullervo goes
off to war with a spring in his step
that even the towering intrusions of
heavy brass can’t quite quell, a fine
balance between optimism and brute reality
that Davis strikes finely! The whirling
coda is brilliantly brought off - you’re
kept guessing as to which chord is the
last. In the finale, the male voice
choir reports Kullervo’s death in bone-chilling
tones. Davis doesn’t miss the harbinger
of genius to come in the evolving agitation
of the strings, any more than he underplays
the fearsome funeral oration.
This is riveting. The
uniformly involving playing, singing,
and conducting combine to provide a
far more consistent and gripping experience
than the pioneering Berglund. Good as
that was, it tended to be rather stolid
and unimaginative. Davis, on the other
hand, is hell-bent on convincing us
that this is the finest music in the
world. I was left thinking, ‘Maybe it
is.’
This set appears under
the collective title ‘Complete Collections’.
I’m inclined to wonder, ‘Collections
of what?’ Certainly of Sibelius’s symphonies,
but it doesn’t stop there. The inclusion
of Rakastava as a fill-up merely
rounds off five CDs. The set also includes
two further well-filled CDs of orchestral
works, but they don’t by any means cover
all the ground. I would guess, because
I haven’t checked, that this set is
a ‘complete collection’ of Davis’s RCA
recordings. No matter, it makes an excellent
‘Sibelius starter pack’ which for many
will serve them a lifetime.
I had imagined that
Davis, with his Berlioz background,
would tackle these symphonic poems and
what-have-you with rather more ‘dramatic’
freedom. He doesn’t! He treats each
one with the same respect he brings
to the symphonies, and using the identical
approach. It turns out to be every bit
as revealing, making ‘little symphonies’
out of Sibelius’s symphonic dramas.
Far from sacrificing dramatic impact,
this focus on detail, control and clarity
is again the tool that turns on the
tap of vitality.
Taking as read that
these are all top-notch performances,
I’ll just give you a few exemplary highlights
to convey the flavour. In the Lemminkäinen
Suite, the string tremolandi at
the opening of Lemminkäinen
in Tuonela are truly ‘shiversome’,
with a beautifully-controlled accelerando
to admit the ‘slow’ wind line at about
the original tempo. Lemminkäinen’s
Return is given a terrific sense
of expectancy, of latent energy that
is released in dynamic surges and detonations.
The textures in Pohjola’s
Daughter are mouth-watering. The
crystal-clear articulation brings some
glistening harp and string sounds and
accentuates the ‘weird noises’. Near
the end, the return of the brass declamations
is underpinned by strings sawing so
hard that I suspect the ‘dark fire’
they generate results from a successful
application of the ‘Boy Scout’ method!
In The Bard, the harp arpeggios
are clipped neatly, giving the impression
of a lyre. In spite of its purposeful
opening, much of Tapiola meanders
like the paths of its putative forest.
It is stressed and strained, shot through
with dislocated, violent eruptions -
wild, raw music in which the spectre-ridden
rubs against the nightmarish. Davis
and the LSO play it simply ‘like it
is’, and it is fearful!
In the Valse Triste,
perhaps more than in any other Sibelius,
management of the ‘flexible line’ is
of paramount importance. Whilst adopting
a properly slow tempo, Davis makes sure
to maintain a pronounced and distinct
valse pulse. He holds the pregnant
pauses just ‘so’, bends the tempo, and
lets the proper dance episodes flow,
rather than whipping them up. Davis’s
climax of throbbing passion really throbs.
Shades of Hector’s Idée Fixe,
maybe?
What of the two infamous
‘warhorses’? Finlandia’s opening
brass have great breadth and power,
the string phrases full of telling stresses.
Prodded by Davis’s sharp, pointy stick,
the fast music has a brilliance, urgency
and hair-curling excitement that outshines
even the legendary HvK - thrust and
bounce abound! Davis is careful to keep
the Big Tune moving, holding its shape,
and it’s all the better for it. On its
repeat (violins), I was awakened to
a thrumming bass that lent an extra
frisson. The longer it goes on, the
better it gets - this is right out of
the top drawer.
The other ‘warhorse’,
the Karelia Suite, brought further
revelations to my ears, jaded as they
can be through years of familiarity.
I’d always thought of the central Ballade
as soporific, something of an over-long
interlude between the two ‘good bits’.
Davis has changed my mind (you see,
it’s never too late to learn!). He has
rummaged through the drawers of the
score, and come up with all sorts of
turning, chattering counterpoints in
the accompaniment. As I’ve said, details
like these must have been there all
the time, sitting in the score just
waiting for someone to notice how important
they were - and Colin Davis is the kindly
soul who has helped them out. How important
these details are can be judged by their
impact on the music, which is immediately
much more mobile and alive. Alright,
Davis does take it at andante rather
than lento, but so do plenty of others,
so I’m sure that isn’t why this ‘soporific’
has suddenly become a ‘pep-pill’.
In the opening Intermezzo,
Davis follows Barbirolli in adopting
a more measured tempo than is customary.
‘Measured’ it may be, but it’s still
quite quick enough if you were actually
to march to it. However, unlike
Barbirolli who is simply ‘measured’,
Davis fills the elbow-room with a further
trove of treasurable details. He also
builds resolutely towards the climax,
where another reason for the chosen
tempo becomes apparent: if it’s taken
too quickly, the climax zips by like
an over-anxious loss of virginity! This
suite to savour is rounded off with
one of the most thrilling renditions
of the Alla Marcia it’s ever
been my joy to behold. I’m almost inclined
to say it’s worth the asking price on
its own! My one regret is that Davis
didn’t see fit to set down the equally
energetic Karelia Overture; there
would have been plenty of room for it
on CD3 or CD5!
Speaking of cash, this
set is a budget production, working
out at around £5 to £6 a CD. Costs have
been cut by providing the discs in cardboard
sleeves all neatly wrapped in a sturdy-ish
box. Having said that, it’s both economical
on shelf space and infinitely preferable
to those detestable ‘jewel cases’. The
‘boast’ on the box, that it ‘contains
108-page booklet’, is somewhat deflated
by the qualifying ‘in English, German
and French’, but that still comes to
38 pages per language, which seems pretty
fair - and a damned sight better than
nothing at all! The uniformly useful
English notes are variously by David
Wright, Herbert Glass and Karsten Niemann
- this last translated into thoroughly
idiomatic English by Hugh Keith. Regarding
Kullervo, the Bad News is that
there are neither texts nor translations,
nor even a decent synopsis of the ‘action’.
Still, nowadays you can always chase
these things up on the ‘Net’, n’est-ce
pas?
To Sum Up . . .
I haven’t said over-much
about the playing of the LSO. In truth,
I don’t need to: across the board, the
playing is so unfailingly excellent
that it would be unfair of me to single
anything out. Suffice it to say that
the players, to a man, play their socks
off, doing full justice to every last
ounce, or 28 grammes, of Davis’s conception
of the music. In Kullervo, the
soloists are both characterful and eminently
listenable, and men’s chorus is nothing
short of superb.
These recordings were
made in four different venues, so it
is a credit to the recording engineers
to be able to say that it’s hard to
distinguish them. Not only that, but
they have backed up the conductor’s
approach admirably, setting the performers
well forward in a warm but not over-reverberant
acoustic. There is some judicious ‘spotlighting’
of soloists, but on the whole the impression
is of a very natural sound-stage. The
actual sound is incisive, with a slight
tendency to steely brilliance. This
is only occasional, and on some of those
occasions I felt convinced that it was
actually part and parcel of Davis’s
desired effect.
That leaves Sir Colin
Davis. I feel that his conception of
Sibelius’s orchestral music probably
deserves the epithet ‘radical’, as I
certainly have not previously come across
an approach like it. There’s no denying
the dividends paid by treating Sibelius
as ‘classical’: in terms of clarity
of texture and articulation of detail
Davis must be counted as unparalleled.
Added to that he also pushes all the
right buttons architecturally and dramatically.
Not everything is ‘perfect’ - nobody
can be that! - but this is as near as
you’re going to get. If you’re new to
Sibelius, I can’t think of a better
introduction than this. If you’ve known
and loved Sibelius for more years than
you care to remember, and you haven’t
yet encountered these recordings, then
you simply must, must put that
right.
Paul Serotsky
Hillevi Martinpelto (sop.)†, Karl-Magnus
Fredriksson (bar.)† 