In December of last year I
reviewed Søndergård’s live performances with this orchestra of the
Sibelius
First and
Sixth symphonies. I mentioned that I
had been informed that these same forces were to undertake a complete cycle
of the Sibelius symphonies for disc and that – on the basis of the
performances I had heard so far – this would constitute a considerable
challenge to existing recordings. Well, here is the first instalment of that
cycle, and I find myself in something of a quandary since it fails to live
up to my high expectations.
In the first place, these are studio recordings made in the orchestra’s
own Hoddinott Hall, and the recorded balance does not really do justice to
the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, particularly in the string department.
These players have a richness of tone and body of sound that is extremely
impressive, challenging the very best in the UK. Sadly, the balance here
gives them decidedly short measure, as if the microphones have been placed
to favour the wind. The recorded sound certainly does not reflect the real
sound that this orchestra produces.
In the second place, the recordings here are not the same performances as
those broadcast at the time. The
Seventh was set down a couple of
days before the live BBC relay, and sounds very similar to the performance I
recall from the concert hall. The
Second, which these same players
and conductor gave at a live concert in St David’s Hall some months later
and which I described in my review for
Seen and Heard as “simply
perfect” sounds here almost like the work of a completely different group of
performers. Clearly during the period which elapsed between this recording
and the live concert Søndergård had substantially reconsidered and refined
his interpretation and it has to be said that his second thoughts were
decided improvements. In the live concert he was prepared to be daringly
slow especially in the second movement, charging the lengthy opening
pizzicato passages with unsuspected depths of meaning; here he is
considerably brisker, and the results sound much more ordinary. Similarly
the closer balance given on this disc to the bassoons when they enter is
much less mysteriously eerie than it was in the concert hall. I realise that
audience coughing might have militated against a release of the broadcast
relay unedited, but it really might have been preferable to ‘patch’ the live
performance with its much weightier and more resonant string sound. The
string definition and precision in the scherzo and finale remains
marvellous, but the recessed sound they are given does not begin to do
justice to the sheer volume they normally produce.
In the event what we have here is a performance of the Sibelius
Second which is much more ordinary than that Søndergård and the BBC
NoW gave six months later. That of the
Seventh was made some five
days before a live BBC relay which was hastily inserted into the
broadcasting schedules on 1 April last year, and I can do no better than
repeat some of what I said at that time:-
“Balances were expertly and exquisitely judged, enabling all the
orchestral strands of the music to come through clearly. One might have
hoped that the resolving string discord in the final cadence could have been
stronger, but apart from this very minor cavil this was an excellent
performance which served to dispel any persistent nagging doubt that this
work might not really be a symphony at all. Sibelius himself was in doubt,
originally entitling the score
Fantasia sinfonica, and indeed the
fluid manner in which he moves from tempo to tempo has nothing of the more
formal approaches that often is employed by composers in one-movement
symphonies (usually consisting of the incorporation of scherzo and
slow-movement elements into a more or less standard sonata form). But
Søndergård managed to bind together the disparate sections into a unified
and satisfying whole.”
These words also describe the recorded performance we have here, except
that once again the string sound in the hall during the live relay was more
‘present’ than in this disc.
Dan Morgan has already
reviewed this disc as a download and quoted my comments last
December regarding the prospect of a BBC NoW/Søndergård cycle as “brave
words” in view of the existing competition. I am very much afraid to say
that this recording does not do real justice to performances that in the
concert hall have really been something very special indeed.
Andrew Achenbach supplies a comprehensive eight-page booklet note, but the
photograph of the orchestra was clearly not taken in the Hoddinott Hall.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Previous review:
Dan Morgan
