Sibelius 1 & 3: Mark Elder, Halle: Clear, Lean, Frosty, Ever
Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 05/19/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I've been a fan of Mark Elder since his work with English National Opera. I find his orchestra music releases to be a mixed bag. Some I like very much, others I can take or leave, depending.
My top fav of the Sibelius first symphony still has to be the singular release by that old trickster, Leopold Stokowski, leading the studio pickup band, National Philharmonic. I think it is still available on a Sony two-fer, matched with a hohum-decent second symphony by New York under Thomas Schippers. For good measure, you also get Zino Francescatti doing the violin concerto with help from Bernstein.
Osmo Vanska has a wonderful first symphony, too, part of his full set of all the symphonies. I even got the super audio complete set with Jarvi in Goteberg Sweden. That set occasions no complaints; yet I am not nearly as moved by its Sibelius as I know I can be, by those readings which take hold and compel musical memory. Herbert Blomstedt has a first that stays with me. I hold his complete set with San Francisco to be a high marker among comparisons with single releases and sets all told. Finally, though not widely released in USA, I managed to get the Sakari Oramo symphony set with Birmingham on Warner. Right up there, those players, with Blomstedt and Vanska. I still like Colin Davis in Boston, and his newish LSO label readings, at least some of whom arrive in high resolution super audio surround sound. I still have the von Karajan-Berlin singles on EMI and DGG. (Only the third symphony is missing from von Karajan's recorded legacy.) I've also started on the new super audio Helsinki set led by Vladimir Ashkenazy.
In this new single release, the Halle Orchestra of Manchester is competing with itself. A full set was recorded on EMI under their former distinguished music director, Sir John Barbirolli. His reading of the second symphony with the Royal Philharmonic is my touchstone in that work; yet I find his Halle set a mixed bag. Barbirolli's slow tempos and rhetorical-dramatic flourish are my sort of Sibelius - but sometimes I need more bite from the Halle of his era than I get.
Now, Elder with Halle joins the top Sibelius music ranks, to my ears.
From the opening clarinet atmosphere of the first symphony, we get a sense of wide open Sibelius space, bardic musings and all. Beneath, timpani rolls are stretching out a heroic line, horizon. The orchestra is a marvelous instrument, Sibelius said, but it lacks a pedal point. Then the top strings hit, followed by the lower strings. Their sound is muscular, ringing, and has that touch of bite. A listener suddenly thinks this may be a real deal. As brass and woodwind choirs join the fray, the music unfolds brilliantly in technicolor, panavision sweep.
Elder has the band departments phrasing just a tad more flexibly than not. The impetus at the heart of the first movement never goes off course, even while Elder has players bring out passing details and flourishes in a turn of the moment. Some of those turns communicate a nearly intoxicated sense or smell of harsh, chilly, forested climes. Sibelius sound waves gather and crash upon the brass cliffs. Crisp woodwinds fill in the many different colors, high to low, and keen like wind or bird sounds. This sounds a natural landscape, never lazy-leisurely, and not pastoral in the sense that we can afford to kick back and relax, free from change or danger.
By the end of the first movement, I am thinking this disc is a keeper. It has that bite, that sense of natural forces gathering in outsized, inhuman scale which is essential to the northern atmospherics which typify Sibelius to my ears. The closing pages are both a dramatic chapter pause, and an unerringly astute invitation to come indoors for a spell, as we shut the doors against the elements.
The second movement is all warmth, hearth song. Sad touches, fragile with loss, vulnerable to relentless cold. Folk play touches. Hero stories. Family romance touches. Here is it, right here - that we have all survived so far. Here. Kept in all the winters, waiting for all the Springs. The harmonic shifts are muscular and pulsing, cold guffs brushing us even in full, bright sunshine. What heroes and heroines our survival has given us, what tales of mystery and courage. The closing pages of the second movement go all tender with folk color musical designs, permeated with restrained feeling, Lullaby.
Third movement scherzo is happy, vigorous, an outdoor air adventure. The folk motions are sleigh ride and troika, nearly as populist as, say, Tchaikovsky in the Seasons piano cycle. Yet something in the music still has bite and can open, back into recollection, bardic narratives, and warmth. The slowish middle sections have plenty of human scale, set off by that backdrop of hard, rocky, icy North. Our hunts are a necessity, and also a traditional game of our prowess, being a folk.
The Finale fourth movement is all natural horizon and outward vision again. Like the first movement, this last takes its own sweet time to gather in its selective, distinctive, musical materials. Time to note and observe all the lights and shadows cast. Time to feel how nature moves, slow or fast. Vigorously, we can now move, alive in this musical landscape. Ah, those strings in Halle. Their heft, their bite, their warm song. This last movement's closing motives are broad song, and broadly sung. A folk song of the people and the landscape, not just of any individual or family. Tune and chorus, round and round. Tune and chorus, dancing. Tune and chorus, hymnal. Returning us at the end to the size and sweep of the musical landscapes with which the symphony began. Our whole human business seems transcendental, like looking back at the blue-green marble of our earth planet, whole, from space. Hear those bottom, growling pedal points as Sibelius gathers his considerable strength. What a great, great, great mystery. That all this, and all of we - are here, just here. Here.
A reading of the third symphony follows this epic presentation of the first. It strikes out in full folk colors, all flags gently flying in a lifting, even sometimes vigorous breeze. While other readings are content to emphasize the classical poise and proportions of the first movement as a new calling card for the composer's emerging style; this first movement doesn't hesitate to recall larger, more Romantic matters. Some of those melodic lines which stay primly reposed under other conductors with other players, here lift up, bigger, born higher aloft with slightly more reach than we might hear as customary. Musical colors are more saturated, more lights, more shadows. This first movement will burst confidently into full-throated, vigorous, alive dance and song than is our typical interpretive case.
A second movement gently chimes. Not only the leading melody, but its harmonies, glow and gleam and glitter, embroidered into the most gorgeous fine musical tapestry. Again, our central melody matches a deft sense of balance with being remarkably open-hearted. Quasi Allegretto, those growly bottom orchestra mysteries play transformatively into the upper orchestra harmonics and dancing counterpoint. Then an effortlessly floating, singing reprise, then done.
The last movement of this third stays true to the folks colors and muscular vitalities that have gone before. Like other Sibelius final movements, it gathers its materials. Builds up. Gestures hints towards the big, hammer-god-slinging-axe main theme that will eventually break through in the fifth symphony's last movement. Again the string counterpoint has bite, as well as point. Old George Szell in Cleveland was a past master of this sort of magic. By the end of this movement, our journey is complete, and the closing has been more big hearted than usual. Yes, yes, yes.
The notes for this disc say that the first symphony was recorded in the studio, and the third symphony, live. You cannot distinguish per any negatives in the sound. Nor is the studio first one whit less exciting, colorful, or engaged than the live concert performance of the third. No intrusive audience noises, save for the closing applause. If this is the start of a full Sibelius symphony cycle, we are in for a rare and delicious musical treat. More than most readings committed to disc already, this first disc lays out a case for Sibelius that is so far from ordinary - even the most excellent sort of ordinary - that I can resolutely call for cheers. Lovers of Sibelius, unite, rejoice. This disc is the real Sibelius deal. Oh yes, five stars."
Track Listings (7) - Disc #1