There is no shortage
of good, even great Kullervos in the
present catalogue. Indeed, the work
seems to have had a major renaissance
in recent years, at least compared to
my teens when the only version available
seemed to be the now much revered Paavo
Berglund/Bournemouth Symphony version
on EMI. How well I remember the 2 LP
box and the blazingly intense performance
it contained. I hate to harp on about
formative listening experiences, but
they do shape your view of a piece for
years to come. It seemed an age before
we got anything as good, but like a
London bus, they all come at once and
Robert Spano’s beautifully played and
recorded performance is the latest in
a line of distinguished new recordings
of this marvellous work.
We all know it is early
Sibelius and yes, there are weak moments
and odd longeurs in this sprawling,
epic score. There is a debt to Bruckner
and Wagner in certain passages, as well
as the odd hint that he knew his Russian
masters. It has to be fortunate for
us that he had to sell the score rather
than suppress it, as he most likely
would have done, particularly as it
seems to be light years away from the
sparse, concentrated form of his later
works. If viewed as a symphonic cantata,
there are also some glorious moments
that point us directly towards the mature
Sibelius, such as the long pedal point
build-ups, the rhythmic ostinatos
and the woodwind writing, especially
the passages where they play in thirds.
Robert Spano clearly
believes in the score and he has drilled
his forces well. He conducts a relatively
leisurely reading, one with bags of
mood and atmosphere that compares well
with, say, Jukka Pekka Saraste’s searing
- and underrated - account on budget
Ultima or Colin Davis’s spacious but
magnetic reading on LSO Live, to say
nothing of the Berglund, now part of
a big – but cheap - box.
The disc starts impressively
with the Brucknerian urthema rising
out of a Finnish mist. Davis’s live
reading possibly digs even deeper, but
the Atlanta orchestra plays beautifully
in all departments and there is a real
magnetic sweep to this music-making.
The second movement, ‘Kullervo’s Youth’
is beautifully shaped, tender and moving
and with memorable colour and unanimity
from the woodwind right from the start.
The heart of the symphony is the long
central movement ‘Kullervo and his Sister’,
Sibelius’s first setting of the Kalevala
and a veritable operatic scena involving
the two soloists and chorus. I must
say that the large male choir continue
the venerable tradition of past Atlanta
choruses; their diction is simply superb
and the tonal impact thrilling. Of the
two soloists, I prefer Nathan Gunn,
strong, full-voiced and more youthfully
virile than the ubiquitous Jorma Hynninen.
Mezzo Charlotte Hellekant shapes the
words well but doesn’t produce as memorable
a tone as Monica Groop for Davis and
Saraste.
Spano whips up a real
urgency in what is the symphony’s scherzo,
‘Kullervo goes to War’, a difficult
movement to bring off, and here the
superb Telarc recording comes into its
own, with glorious clarity, range and
presence. The finale is genuinely moving,
preferable here to Davis, whose grunts
and groans are audible and whose recording
is drier and less well balanced. Of
course Davis is cheaper than Spano,
as are quite a few others, so the buyer
is in an enviable position. There are,
quite simply, lots of impressive Kullervos
now on the market – to the above you
can add Vänskä and Järvi
- but this brilliantly engineered Telarc
disc has a cumulative impact that is
truly impressive, so an impulse purchase
will most definitely not disappoint.
Tony Haywood
Charlotte Hellekant (mezzo)
