Search - Jean Sibelius, Paul Hindemith, Olli Mustonen :: Sibelius: Symphony No. 3; Hindemith: The Four Temperaments

Mustonen, Helsinki Festival Orch: Sibelius 3, Hindemith 4 Te

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 04/30/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Olli Mustonen is here conducting the occasional band assembled for the Helsinki Festival in Finland. From the sounds of the music being made on this disc, the festival must have attracted many fine players in all band departments - perhaps from all over Finland. The orchestra sounds smaller, but by no means diminished or lacking. Strings are touched with warmth, though basically lean and athletic in vigor. Think, Chamber Orchestra of Europe. The woodwinds are right on target, not something that can be taken for granted in Sibelius after all. Brass bring off their share, expertly. Everybody sounds youthful, as if deeply happy to be playing music together, as if never bored for a passing moment with the musical assignments the composers gave them.



The Sibelius third symphony is often played as the most accessible, most poised, most intimately self-content of his seven symphonies. (Well, okay, eight if we count Kullervo. Maybe more if we count the compressed symphonic substance of several of the titled tone poems?) That sort of approach serves the music of the third symphony quite well. Yet on this disc we have a reading more energetic than usual, certainly with vigor and poise in equal parts. The tuneful melodies are as beautiful as ever, yet sound out with more vitamins in this reading, displaying qualities more akin to muscular gesture, moving, than we typically expect in this work.



When it comes to the quasi-chamber music of the second, slow movement; Mustonen and the band keep things going right along. There is plenty of touch and glitter in the sensuous melodies; yet the atmosphere is not quite wet enough, nor hot enough to really be languorous. Sun full shining, the edges of the lake breeze are crisp with cool spatter drops. What gives is that the forward motion in this slow movement is as important as the pizzicato low strings, muttering mystery of nature whole. The allegretto stays allegretto, but we are always aware that this young athlete can effortlessly break into liveliness at once, though he seems not to wish to do so for the passing moments. The return of the allegretto at the end of the slow movement seems to hint at much more than it says outright. The brighter the lights, as perhaps Carl Jung said, the darker and deeper the shadows.



Then the closing third movement whisks us listeners on. The woodwind solos are pointed, again seeming to point towards something which they are not quite yet saying right out. The polyphony gathers, poking about, asking questions which are all too lovely as cover stories for the real life questions that youth will not ask until we are much, much older. Athletic vigor returns and gathers, too, as the polyphony of this last movement builds into gestures like dance, gymnastic. As brass and woodwinds pile on, the music supersedes us, building far beyond our personal stories, becoming again like that familiar topography, those forces of nature we so often link to Sibelius' musical visions. By the end of the symphony, a listener may be forgiven for suddenly glimpsing that something larger has all too quickly passed us by.



This reading of the third symphony is different, then. Sibelius sounds even closer kin to the near-mystic brevities of Webern, or the sophisticated nuances of USA composer Virgil Thomson. Imagine that.



I suppose the good news so far is that this reading of the third symphony demonstrates that Mustonen as a band leader is up to considerable speed. He is not a keyboard whiz-kid, dabbling nicely and neatly with the larger pond waters of the orchestra. He is consistently musical, and he is vigorous and wide awake, and everybody playing is here along with him.



The remainder of this disc brings us the Paul Hindemith Four Temperaments. Written on the fly through Paris on the way to safety in the USA (where the composer would settle as escape from the Nazis), this music is organized as a theme and variations for keyboard with string orchestra. It was written as dance music, and it is hard not hear a good bit of appealing Parisian elegance in the music, gone all deft and fluid and gilded with big city arts. Some of the variations dig into modernist, chamber music textures, surprisingly to the good of the work. As keyboard soloist, Mustonen makes the most of his parts. He especially likes to point and inflect the musical phrases. Indeed, while his piano tone is fully up to his tasks, he sounds like the sort of player who would rather make a musical point than just sound pretty with rounded, saturated piano colors.



My existing standard in this work has long been Carol Rosenberger and the Royal Philharmonic under conductor James DePriest. I also note a Salonen disc with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Emmanuel Ax taking the solo keyboard part in Four Temperaments. I suspect that this Salonen disc will be played up to the tens, and I think I must rank the current Mustonen right up there, too. The Helsinki players offer up a much more incisive chamber reading of the work; while the Royal Philharmonic and the Los Angeles will no doubt offer filled out, big band readings. Mustonen is not anemic, even if his band is not the biggest band possible. The Helsinki Festival puts its fine players on good display, bringing out the sprightliness of all that ensemble music-making as the variations unfold. Mustonen and band touched with Swiss watch intellectual poetry, then. The big band readings, that much bigger, warmer, acting that much more heroic.



A tribute to Hindemith genius? The Four Temperaments comes off well, either way. Like the alternate reading of the Sibelius third symphony. Technically, I think Ondine has sold out on this disc, but you can still find a used one to enjoy. Recommended."