| REVIEWS: divine art historic sound 27801 Sibelius Symphonies 5,6. | |
MUSICAL OPINION: I have been playing Kajanus’ recording of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony on 78s since 1950, with rose thorns to give the best sound, and this dubbing is the first in modern sound to give me real satisfaction, together with a remarkably dramatic performance of Tapiola. Robert Kajanus was the first champion of Sibelius’ music and it was he who introduced Finlandia and other works to the Paris Exhibition audience, launching Finland as a musical nation and Sibelius as a genius. The recording with the London Symphony Orchestra was made on 28 June 1932 and few accounts of the Fifth Symphony are more dramatic in the horn theme of the finale. The Sixth Symphony, often neglected and regarded as introverted, was recorded on 8 June 1934 by Finland’s leading orchestra under Georg Schnéevoigt, the other important Finnish conductor, who also made a reputation in Los Angeles. Here is a performance of a Sibelius work by the composer’s fellow musicians, whose understanding of his language produces such a fascinating interpretation. If historic dubbings seem difficult to hear, give the CD extra time and you will find remarkable enjoyment and stimulus as your ears and brain adjust to the sound FEDERATION OF RECORDED MUSIC SOCIETIES BULLETIN: Symphony No. 5 and Tapiola are performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Kajanus and the 6th Symphony performed by the Finnish National Orchestra conducted by Geog Schnéevoigt. Both were recorded in 1932 and issued by HMV on behalf of the Sibelius Society. These 78 recordings were well known to Sibelius and the performances endorsed by him. Thus the recordings are considered by many as being definitive. I well remember hearing some of these early Sibelius Society recordings. The music seemed very strange, but often exciting. Their price and the fact that you could not purchase individual records but only a complete album ensured that they were rarities. As with many 78 recordings of that era made by HMV the surface noise was excruciating. This issue is of astonishingly high quality, with all trace of surface noise removed. It is hard to believe believe that the recordings were made such a long time ago. There is a technical note by Andrew Rose, who said that of all his restorations this is perhaps the one he is most proud of. Kajanus is the conductor who was specially noted for authentic performances of Sibelius, and locally Schnéevoigt was considered his younger rival. All three pieces are given unsentimental performances, driven hard, but applying flexibility of tempo and phrasing where appropriate. In the last few decades, conductors have tended towards relatively slow performances, especially in the slow movements, thus emphasising the emotional feelings which can be found in the music. This disc will serve as a corrective to this approach, and some listeners will be shocked by these performances. However this disc is of genuine historical importance and lovers of Sibelius should consider buying. The two performances by Kajanus are especially exciting. That the 6th is perhaps less overwhelming is due most to the nature of the Symphony which is perhaps the most enigmatical work produced by Sibelius and the subtlety of the scoring has most to gain from modern recording. A fascinating release.
MUSICWEB: Kajanus's Tapiola is even more impressive. Every little shudder and tremor registers in perfectly balanced gradation. Even the woodwind shrieks at 3.20 are given without the overlay of emphasis we find in most modern performances. They come and go with inhuman concentration. This version of Tapiola brought out powerfully the evolution of Sibelius's character from the romantic hell-raiser of En Saga to the forbidding mage of the Northern forests in Tapiola. Kajanus makes a deeply impressive gale which plies the Finnish saplings double (14.02-15:01). Even his progressive diminution of the gale is grippingly done; such is the control he exercises. The documentation is good and extensive in English only. There’s a welcome technical note from Andrew Rose who has virtually eliminated high frequency hiss. He has also removed most of the crackling ‘bacon frying’ sound so typical of HMV 78s of the 1930s. That this detritus has gone and that he has managed to preserve the impact of music-making now getting on for eighty years old merits high praise. I hope we will hear more from Mr Rose in the future. Incidentally, I also hope that his commitment to Divine Art projects will not prevent his keeping his immensely valuable Moeran website up to date. Georg Schnéevoigt and his Helsinki Symphony Orchestra were seen as adversaries of Kajanus and his Helsinki Orchestral Society. After the Great War the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestral Society were merged. Both Kajanus and Schnéevoigt (1872-1947) are unsentimental yet generate plenty of atmosphere. Both keep things moving along. It is this refusal to dawdle that marks out Schnéevoigt’s version of the Sixth Symphony. His orchestra are pushed to their limits and beyond. Beecham’s RPO in 1947 managed things better but for a modern recording let me strongly recommend Sakari Oramo’s powerhouse of a performance on Warner-Erato. Divine Art beat Naxos to the draw with cleaned up revivals of these 1930s historicals. If you do not already have these and are a dedicated Sibelian then there is no reason to hold back. Given their historical sound these cannot be first recommendations but the Sibelian spirit burns brightly in these readings made during the lifetime of the composer even if the 1930s marked the start of three decades of silence from Järvenpäa. Unsentimental yet not clinical readings. Historically significant for dedicated Sibelians. Perhaps you object to the Naxos or Pearl approach of leaving in place the hiss and crackle stigmata of the 1930s. Here Andrew Rose's sprucing up has produced highly listenable recordings which represent a more interventionist approach than some fundamentalists favour. I hope that Divine Art and Andrew Rose will now look at the other Sibelius Society issues. When they are done and dusted I have the highest hopes that they might tackle Boult's superb 1950s recordings of the tone poems. CLASSIC RECORD COLLECTOR: Kajanus was Legge’s first choice to record for the Sibelius Society, and his interpretation of the Fifth Symphony is an outstanding achievement. It is characterised by straightforwardness – the conductor fully and transparently trusting the composer’s intentions. Kajanus’s intervention is felt only in small tempo changes – emphasising and enabling a player or a section more fully to reveal a contrast in character. He avoids over-emphatic gestures, and the music is the better for it. The soundscape is particularly clear and open. In part a tribute to the excellence of the original recording, part the quality of the 1932 LSO, but most of all, this is a reflection of the good work of the conductor. The complex rhythmic structure of the symphony is especially well realised, and there is careful attention to the clarity and vitality of each line of Sibelius’s complex layering hemiolas. This is a recording that makes one feel that something of the musical essence of these works has been lost in the modern obsession with declamation and effect. Kajanus directs us to the complexity and craftsmanship of the texture, the subtle gradations of dynamic, and the directness of form and structure. With the exception of a single careless splice in the first movement (adding nearly a beat to the scherzo episode) the remastering is excellent. The technical note states the aim of compensating “for the tendency to thinness in the bass”: to this listener, however, the cure results in the lower frequencies being rather overstated and boomy at times. Unfortunately, the Schnéevoigt recording of the Sixth Symphony – one of the most accomplished of Sibelius’s works in the genre, and often overlooked – is not of the same order. The Finnish National Orchestra is not of a comparable quality to the LSO, and the conductor is unable to deliver comparable results. RADIO BELGE: Curiously the composer had worked simultaneously on his fifth, sixth and seventh symphonies, although they were quite different, and the last two of which would not see the light of day until several years later. Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, composed in 1914/15 and revised between 1916 and 1919, is a work of truly hymn-like inspiration, with a warm, direct lyricism, in which some passages burst in undertones of triumph. After the harshness, tension and asceticism of Symphony No. 4 in A minor, this one recovers the richness of Sibelian orchestration, linked with strong, generous humanity, which makes if the most Beethovenian of his symphonies. For all these reasons, it is certainly this, together with Symphony No. 2, which has gained the most widespread and lasting popularity. Symphony No. 6 in D minor was completed in 1923, and Sibelius described it as “pure cold water”. It is in any event the most discreet and intimate of his symphonies, and the almost impressionistic refinement of its colour finally shows us to what extent Debussy must have influenced the Finnish composer’s writing. Here he uses the principle - first developed in Symphony No. 2 in D major - which he called “thematic growth”, creating passages which move from being at first rudimentary, and sometimes even disparate, to full melodic lines, whose conjunction will form the general structure of the work, going as far as replacing the development of a theme by a total renewal, without in any way compromising the unity of the performance. On several occasions Sibelius had announced an eighth symphony which was never revealed. The majority of it seemed to have been written, and revised several times, without ever being to the composer’s satisfaction, and he was widely believed to have destroyed it. In fact he began a mysterious silence which was to become total from 1929 until his death in 1957. However in 1926 he rewrote the symphonic poem Tapiola in which he returned once more to the suggestions from Finnish mythology: Tapio was the supreme deity of the ancient, dark, mysterious forests, and at the outset of this idea Sibelius wrote it as his main work of this genre, an evocation of rare poetic richness, coming from impressionistic, almost Debussyesque, visions to wild outbursts of a fundamental power. To this richness of vision corresponds a complexity of composition which poses considerable demands on the instrumental groups. Some others consider this highly mature work to be the true eighth symphony of the composer. The Sibelius symphonies still pose ambiguous problems to the interpreter. It is quite certain that basically they continue the great traditions of the romantic symphony and that they are written in the style of this grand heritage. But it is obvious that Sibelius infused the old forms from the past with a new poetical and musical substance, and that he often treated even these forms with a freedom which transformed them and conferred on them a range, poetic extension and qualities of colour which belonged only to him. The nationalistic element, but more so the personal element, which Sibelius brought to the Germanic symphony gave it light, atmosphere and resonance which deeply differentiated the essence of his scores and those for example of Bruckner. Therein lies the dilemma facing conductors; it often happens that some romance conductors rationalise this music, whereas some German conductors “Germanise” it and approach it in the tradition from which it came. Few interpreters know how to rediscover the unique richness of its form, its primitiveness, its mystery and its poetry. The energetic and punchy direction of Robert Kajanus restores to us without affectation the fact that Sibelius’ writing is sometimes abrupt and unusual, with occasionally rough contrasts, harsh accents, an unaccustomed mixture of sounds. In short, where many conductors, while glorifying these scores to bring them closer to us, Kajanus does not hesitate to challenge our listening habits and resolutely to disorient us. There probably lies the truth, despite the prestige of many other conductors. When we hear the rich scores under the baton of Robert Kajanus, we fully realise all that they had and retain, irrelevant to the present day, as the post-romantic heritage which it pursued in the language used by the composer is transformed by a vision and a poetic whisper without other examples, and also because the language translates a musical substance whose roots we would search for in vain in one of his predecessors or contemporaries. All these characteristics of interpretation are found equally in the Finnish conductor, Georg Schnéevoigt, but perhaps at a less noticeable level, in view of the more intimate side of Symphony No. 6 which he interprets in other musical respects extremely subtly and sensitively. Let us point out that here the poco vivace third movement of this symphony is executed rather as molto vivace probably because of the limitations of the 78. From the technical standpoint of transfers from 78 to CD, we should mention the excellent work of Andrew Rose of Pristine Audio which is worthy of the highest praise: faultless matching of sides and natural sound, a real pleasure to listen to. So we have a recording on CD which once again indicates the essential cultural role of the disc in the preservation of our most precious musical heritage. THE JOURNAL CULTURE MAGAZINE:
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