Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957)
Symphony No. 2 (1901) [44:07]
NWDR Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg/Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt
rec. 1956, Hamburg
PRISTINE AUDIO XR PASC 186 [44:07]
The recording of his with the NWDR that Schmidt-Isserstedt most liked was
the traversal of Dvorák’s Seventh Symphony. Still, he couldn’t have been too
displeased with this recording of Sibelius’s Second Symphony, which he taped
in Hamburg in 1956. It receives the XR treatment from Andrew Rose.
This was originally issued on Parlophone and was superintended by John Culshaw.
It preserves a reading of weight and considerable clarity, though it’s also
a performance that cleaves to one option open to conductors, which is to give
expansive treatment to the outer movements. Whilst this acts as a bolstering
architectural device, providing columnar solidity to the edifice and refusing
to jump fences, it can in less practised hands become merely stodgy, missing
the fire and passionate build-up of the finale, downplaying the volatility
of the opening movement.
This recording just about skirts that pitfall, but not by much. It’s measured
and rigorous, spacious and very slightly objectified in places. It has nobility
and great succour too, but it’s not exactly exciting, to be frank. I speak
as a huge admirer of the conductor. At times he brings a certain spruceness
to bear – those winds and percussion for instance, though the inner string
writing registers adeptly and with considerable clarity. The lower brass and
percussion come over well – I don’t know to what extent XR has righted any
balance wrongs because I’ve not heard the LP pressing - and there’s a good,
lean string sonority. The winds are especially plangent in the third movement
where chiselled string articulation is pleasurable. But the finale is on the
broad side, as was the opening. Lyrical and proportionate though it is, it
lacks vitality. We do get the composer-sanctioned timpani part (via Koussevitzky).
There are far, far too many recommendable versions of this symphony but among
historical performances from around this time, Koussevitzky himself, the earlier
totemic Kajanus, Beecham, Barbirolli et al, all offer rather more in
the way of Nordic fire and incremental drive.
Jonathan Woolf