Sibelius’s 10 tone poems are contained on a pair of Chandos compact discs (8395/6 LPs previously released) in which the Scottish National Orchestra is led by Alexander Gibson. The three shorter accompanying Sibelius pieces-"Valse triste,” the “Karelia” Suite and “En Saga"-would, however, have profited from a more direct, energetic approach than Karajan’s. While Ashkenazy and Jarvi bring more energy and tension to this score in their recent recordings, neither approaches the variety of sonority, the dynamic nuancing that Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic achieve in their moderately-paced, darkly insinuating reading (Angel DS-37821, LP). Two such conductors are Vladimir Ashkenazy and Neeme Jarvi, the former having just completed the first digitally recorded Sibelius symphony cycle with the First Symphony (London 414 534, LP or CD), the latter nearing completion of another such cycle with the Second (BIS 252, LP or CD). “Why not Sibelius?” seems to be a question finding favorable response among today’s conductors, notably those in the process of establishing their reputations.
Today, in response to the problem of diminishing concert hall audiences, anything of a relatively “conservative” nature is being considered as a device to lure the customers back. But the Sixth (1923) and Seventh (1924), his final two, more closely resembled the Fourth. The bleak, harmonically adventurous Fourth Symphony of 1911 was considered an aberration, with the more traditional Fifth, which followed five years later, confirming that belief. The Sibelius of such bighearted, Romantic works as his First (1899) and Second (1902) symphonies, both in the Tchaikovskian tradition, was a popular hero when those works were new. By the late-1930s he was ruled passe by critics everywhere but England (where he was more highly regarded than anywhere outside his native Finland, and where traditions die hardest). At that time, in fact, many listeners did not know that his life hadn’t ended in 1927, when he wrote his last works.ĭuring the early decades of this century, Sibelius was commonly ranked with Brahms as a symphonist. Few composers have suffered a more complete decline in popularity than Jean Sibelius did after his death in 1954.
0 kommentar(er)
