Search - Sibelius, San Francisco Symphony, Herbert Blomstedt :: Sibelius: The Symphonies / Blomstedt

Blomstedt, SFSO play Sibelius: Brooding, Mysterious: Icy, Su

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 10/28/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Among my touchstones in complete Sibelius symphony sets released so far, I note: (1) Kurt Sanderling and BerlinSO, (2) Colin Davis and BostonSO, (3) Osmo Vanska and LahtiSO. And of course this set, now newly re-released. I had just about given up on finding used singles for sale of these CD's, so I am quite happy to grab the set complete.



I suppose the marketing department has had a problem with the high excellence of this wonderful set, jostling as it does against a similarly excellent competitor (but maybe a tad more Slavic than Nordic in ethos), that other complete set long available in London/Decca/Universal catalogue, led by Ashkenazy with the Philharmonia of London. Okay, add that one, too, to my touchstone listings.



Like the Carl Nielsen symphonies, also led by Blomstedt with SFSO and published on Decca/London/Universal, these Sibelius performances are destined to wear extremely well as the years go by. Listening to the series all over again, one is flooded with a cornucopia of gifts and blessing and musical insights, all played technically to the hilt by the band, and exuding a sort of mature, passionate wisdom that I can only equate in recordings with Kurt Sanderling.



One of the marvels on offer here is that one hears clearly how Sibelius grows and deepens as one moves through hearing the symphonies played in sequence, one to seven.



The first symphony is luscious and dramatic, speaking in the composer's ever-distinctive voice while staying true to his legacy roots in the Late Romantic-Tchaikovsky school of Baltic-Nordic seasons and cycles. One hears Sibelius' music reaching backwards and forwards at the same time in these interpretations, and the sheer dynamism that is bursting the Late Romantic seams comes aptly near to being limned in sound as a Nordic force of Nature. It is all here in image and connotation - fjords, icy plateaus, mythology and Nordic folklore. With something like the mystical display of the famous Northern Lights, bleeding out awe in the overpoweringly chilling sky above us while we stand deep in the surrounds of the most thickly forested isolation. If you occasionally don't want to drink, sing, and tell old tales while you are listening to this set, maybe you have let yourself get too frost-bitten by the dullness of modern life to yield to its considerable magic.



Blomstedt's second symphony is reaching wider, higher, and deeper than his first. Yet Blomstedt inhabits, still, a Late Romantic ethos of manner, gesture, and sung drama. Every orchestral department is committed and involved, whether pressing out the rich fruits of the lyrical-bardic passages or striding with giant full sounds through the heroic-mythic ones. The strings can sing and etch, delicately; then mass to gigantic effect, leaving you surmounted by an almost Mahlerian pastoral panic, alone. The woodwinds are simply brilliant. The SFSO brass is never blatty, nor dumb - always playing with heft, brassy sheen, and intelligent finesse in all the large and small moments.



The tone poem Tapiola and the Valse triste snippet round out the disc. If anything the Tapiola is even better than the first and second symphonies have been, as the immense intuition that urges Sibelius along grows so fiercely concentrated, so mystically gestural, so intensified - and ever, ever, ever musical. Tapiola (and probably the other Sibelius tone poems?) is free to fully inhabit that Nordic Sibelian cosmos of Nature and Folkloric awe-rituals, even more unrestrainedly than the symphonies, because sonata narrative forms are startlingly irrelevant. The gods or goddesses or Ur-forces and beings of sheer Nature can speak to us in the Blomstedt approach to Tapiola. The stretto strings will set the hairs on the back of your neck standing, if you let them. One immediately finishes hearing Tapiola by returning to regular audience consciousness, lamenting the lack of the remaining tone poems, recorded under Blomstedt with SFSO.



The third symphony moves us into further regions of the composer's openness to musical change. Sibelius allegedly told us at the time: Classicism is the next wave of the musical future. Then he wrote this third symphony to follow that muse. Blomstedt lets SFSO play it, poised, balanced - sensuous and passionate - deceptively, simply self-possessed.



The fourth symphony under Blomstedt simply goes right over the sheer cliffs of western rational narrative in music, plunging wildly and big-heartedly into the abyss. One imagines this is just the sort of music Schoenberg wished he could write when he was doing Gurrelieder as a young man. Instead of Wagernian twilight and love-death negation, the symphony finds another sort of unsuspected pilgrimage and affirmation, quite beyond the clarity and poise and heartiness of the third. Blomstedt encourages the band to stay committed, and the playing is simply wild and marvelous. Are these really the same players who gave us such a clean and clear third symphony? Yes, but their service to the composer's vision transforms them, and probably this fourth symphony will transform its listeners.



After this fourth, the next three symphonies are incredible. Farther, farther, farther. Yes, this fifth stands out as all good recorded iterations must. Its Nordic hero has suffered the pangs and irrational mysteries of the fourth, without having reason, heart, or daring undone by the encounter with our natural and cosmic abyss. This fifth symphony is in love, then, with all of life and all of nature. Rational, irrational, all. The final movement triumph of its famous, swinging horn theme sweeps all before it. Humanity has discovered love yet again, and as Teilhard de Chardin whispered to us, thus does humanity again discover fire. The sixth and seventh symphonies are further incursions into these typically Sibelian, explicable realms. Their wholeness conjures and deepens and affirms all that has musically gone before, always bearing us freshly into the musical means at hand, and at the same time, bearing us further and further away from linear western musical sonata-form narratives into Something Other, Somewhere Else.



Wow. Give stars. Get this set. Beauty + Force. Nuff said"

Fine, atmospheric set, one of the best.

Lance Friedel | Warwick, RI USA | 09/08/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a superb set of the Sibelius symphonies, one of the finest I've heard. Blomstedt, famous for his two cycles of Nielsen symphonies, knows the style and character of this music as well as anyone. There is an intensity and seriousness here that suits the music well. The playing of the San Francisco Symphony is excellent throughout, especially the brass.

The first two symphonies receive bracing performances that balance the structure with the content of the music very well. The Third ranks with Davis and Jarvi as one of the best on record. The Fourth is a fine performance that captures the brooding atmosphere of the piece, though the finale (with tubular bells) doesn't find the balance of darkness and light that I had hoped.

The Fifth is spectacularly good, with tempi and dynamics judged to perfection. The Sixth is rather strange. Consistently slow, it meanders dreamily and misses the joy of the piece. Blomstedt is back on form for the Seventh, which is rugged and positive, making a fitting climax to an altogether wonderful set."

This Set Goes Directly To The Top of the List

Mark E. Stenroos | Laguna Niguel, CA | 12/05/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wonderfully played and recorded, it's simply fantastic that this set is now availble as a box set and at such a reasonable price.



Funny, but I don't remember ever owning CDS of these recordings. Rather, I had them on ill-fated DCC Cassettes where they sounded wonderful (I was working at PolyGram when Philips released its digital compact cassette player and PolyGram folllowed with a number of titles in the new format. I was given a player by my boss who said, "please, get this out of my sight...and take that box of promo DCC cassettes with you!" His loss was my gain. Sadly, the technology never caught on, even though it was backward compatible to normal cassettes. With recordable CDs, DCC never had a chance).



This set really has it all. Collectors are well advised to grab this before the trolls at Universal decide to once again snatch cutout defeat from the excellent recording jaws of victory.



BTW - I don't agree with the negative comments posted here about the recording of the 6th. The lushness and clarity of this recording is quite stunning."