NEW RELEASE SPECIAL - SANTTU SPIRITU SIBELIUS!

[jayne lee wilson]

Sibelius Symphony No.1. En Saga.
Gothenburg SO/Santtu-Matias Rouvali. Alpha 24/96 via Qobuz Studio/or CD.

In the finale of Sibelius’ 1st Symphony, Rouvali is very restrained at the first appearance of the big tune; all the better to astonish you with the work’s true climax, where the same theme has stunning sweep and power, but edge, shape and sensitivity too. The transition through here to the last pages is remarkable for control of pace, line and tension. This finale can be problematic - the episodes hard to keep together - to find their symphonic sense in the current of motivic recurrence; but the marriage of precision and primal energy makes this recording truly exceptional. Allegro Molto - a molten allegro!

True of the whole exceptional performance…

The Gothenburgers often have a rather opulent sound on record - strings especially, often too plush for my taste in northern sounds. But here the
strings are textured, open-weave, with a sharp cutting edge; their melodies are keenly shaped, utterly without blur or approximation. The winds are unusually prominent; the brass powerful but blended, not too overwhelming; part of the landscape. It’s this sense of giving voice tothe landscape, to the spirits and creatures that live within it, that, inter alia, makes this recording so remarkable for me. It has precision into the tiniest of all the deeply-resolved details, every phrase is considered and conducted-through, but that spontaneity - the sense of phenomenal drama, is very vivid. Quite some combination!

Personally, I much prefer performances of the Sibelius 1st that don’t emphasise the supposed Romantic -Tchaikovskian inheritance. I guess it is there, but in a reading like this, with sharpened thematic profiles, biting rhythms and transparent textures, very individualised wind voices (voices of the wind…) you are more aware of that deeper Sibelian essence, the connection to the landscape and the sensations of living within it. The keen winds, vast forests, the cries of wild birds; their mythical sprites and equivalents. That dark, noble creator spiritus at its musical heart.
The first movement is bar-to-bar made new, ultra-detailed yet thought-through, with a marvellously atmospheric opening; every wind solo tells its own tale. The slow movement never overindulges texture or melody for their own Romantic sake, offers instead exceptional sensitivity to phrase, balance and dynamics - but its climax is one of writhing turbulence; the coda regretful of fading energies. I’ve never heard this andante sound quite so essentially Sibelian - or so alive. The scherzo is similarly striking in its sharp-tipped clarity and careful sonic gradations; no previous conductor, surely, has ever found so much in the trio: the mysteries created by infinitesimal care for musical detail. Again, remarkable in a movement that is often just thrown off as a rhythmical repeater.

***
You could easily relate this to say, the 1st Symphony in Vanska’s earlier Lahti cycle, and there are some similarities of clarified line, tempi and texture. But Rouvali’s is more impassioned: decidedly new, individual and very distinctive both in its visionary sweep, and its sharply-cut, extraordinarily nurtured detail.
(En Saga? It gets the performance of its life. See above for apt superlatives…)

I wonder how long their cycle will take…. “if it were done t’were well t’were done quickly”….
The better to keep it sharp and make it new, and create a Sibelius as a musical adventure for our own time.
How apt that this should appear on the ever-enterprising Alpha label; the Rouvali Sibelius Cycle may become just as radically epoch-making as their excellent Haydn 2032 Series.

[gradus]

Spotify have it and I really enjoyed the performance but it's one of those works where I always feel slightly let down by the end of the piece where the great sweeping climactic melody is somehow discarded before reaching it's full potential, something he certainly avoided in sym 2.

[jayne lee wilson]

Spotify have it and I really enjoyed the performance but it's one of those works where I always feel slightly let down by the end of the piece where the great sweeping climactic melody is somehow discarded before reaching it's full potential, something he certainly avoided in sym 2.

For me, that is why Sibelius' 1st is the greater piece of the first two (and one of his masterpieces) - after that great soaring melody, whose intense yearning seems, and sounds, too intense ever to be fulfilled, it ends in tragedy; hopes are undermined; the glowering drum-roll and the darkness of the very opening return - as if they never quite went away...

There aren't too many symphonies ending with pizzicato, are there? Another of the most famous is..... Mahler's 6th.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions and parallels....

[gradus]

[QUOTE=jayne lee wilson;727536]For me, that is why Sibelius' 1st is the greater piece of the first two (and one of his masterpieces) - after that great soaring melody, whose intense yearning seems, and sounds, too intense ever to be fulfilled, it ends in tragedy; hopes are undermined; the glowering drum-roll and the darkness of the very opening return - as if they never quite went away...

There aren't too many symphonies ending with pizzicato, are there? Another of the most famous is..... Mahler's 6th.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions and parallels....[/QUOTE

Can't think of any off-hand and those that end quietly - Elgar2, Brahms3, VW5 come to mind, have a more elegiac feel. I imagine therefore that Sibelius intended us to respond as you have ... but I still wish he'd taken to opportunity to develop such intensely emotional writing differently.

[jayne lee wilson]

But with all the motivic references-back in the finale, and the big tune (itself based on the original motto) treated to two, deflective-then-cumulative developments (the second self-evidently climactic); then that devastatingly compressed coda.......
How would you like it to be different? (No pressure of course...)....

[BBMmk2]

Thanks for the thumbs up for this, JLW. Must be rather special!

[gradus]

But with all the motivic references-back in the finale, and the big tune (itself based on the original motto) treated to two, deflective-then-cumulative developments (the second self-evidently climactic); then that devastatingly compressed coda.......
How would you like it to be different? (No pressure of course...)....

Well what do I know but I suppose I'd have liked him to take the final statement of the big tune and develop it into a further statement and a grand peroration rather as Mahler did with the ending of his third symphony. The compressed coda feels odd to me and I do love a big tune and JS having found something so emotionally stirring, it seems such a shame not to milk it for all it's worth. He certainly wasn't averse to doing it elsewhere but I wouldn't be without it.

[jayne lee wilson]

Well what do I know but I suppose I'd have liked him to take the final statement of the big tune and develop it into a further statement and a grand peroration rather as Mahler did with the ending of his third symphony. The compressed coda feels odd to me and I do love a big tune and JS having found something so emotionally stirring, it seems such a shame not to milk it for all it's worth. He certainly wasn't averse to doing it elsewhere but I wouldn't be without it.

That's fascinating.... so you don't hear it as essentially tragic, then, or....?
Sibelius gives you that "grand peroration" in No.2, surely? So you could see Nos. 1 and 2 as the shadow and the light, artistically complementary from a composer who never repeated himself and was always very self-critical.

For me No.2 is something of a sidestep - or simply the end of a certain phase.
After a magnificent 1st Movement whose motivic integration goes beyond the 1st for its symphonic cogency, it becomes more of a symphonic suite, almost a Finlandia- or Saga-Symphony, with its final triumphal blazing repetitions. Oh, it can be very thrilling if well-played, but then he did follow it with the complete change of direction into something more truly himself - No.3. It is a big step from 1 to 3 of course, but the 1st seems much subtler than the 2nd to me, in its cyclic organisation, and its shades and ambiguities of mood and texture - closer to the 3rd, where Sibelius found his own, more organic symphonic path.

I paid the new Rouvali record the ultimate compliment and after streaming via Qobuz, bought the CD - which is a superbly well-recorded issue (the body and weight of those Gothenburg strings in En Saga is astonishing.).
Andrew Mellor's notes to the works are uncommonly insightful too....
I know that many serious collectors here might prefer to buy cycles, well - at least stream this one, or (as I suspect I will) buy each one as it comes out. Sometimes I feel I've spent too long with Sibelius, but this 1st/En Saga has truly refreshed my responses. I hope the others come along soon!

[DublinJimbo]

You've done it again Jayne: put into words what I was finding difficult to describe about this wonderful recording. My general impression was merely that I was hearing the symphony anew. It's a work which I've often felt uncomfortable with, mainly because of the disjointed and episodic quality of the finale, but this performance is utterly convincing from beginning to end. And what a beginning! The clarinet solo is wonderful and the underpinning from the strings has an unsettling quality which I've never felt before.

Throughout, recording and interpretation gel together in a most wonderful way (subtly different-than-usual phrasing in the slow movement, world-class virtuosity in the scherzo — and, as you say, a trio which grabs attention like never before). All this is remarkable, but the finale goes even further and is an utter triumph. What I've always considered to be an unconvincing episodic sequence here makes absolute sense, with orchestral playing of astonishing quality. I wasn't happy with Rouvali's performances with the orchestra around the time his chief-conductor appointment was announced: in particular he led a performance of Petrushka which was memorable only for being the slowest I've ever sat through, but he's come to unalloyed maturity with this recording of the symphony. This is an inspired and inspiring reading. A wonder.

And yes, you're spot on about En Saga also.

This will be high on my list of top recordings of 2019, that's for sure.

[Alain Maréchal]

For me, that is why Sibelius' 1st is the greater piece of the first two (and one of his masterpieces) - after that great soaring melody, whose intense yearning seems, and sounds, too intense ever to be fulfilled, it ends in tragedy; hopes are undermined; the glowering drum-roll and the darkness of the very opening return - as if they never quite went away...

Jayne, I will take you at your word and ensure I listen to this recording, but I have never considered the 1st as having a tragic ending; to me it is an affirmative ending which concludes with a sense of quiet satisfaction. Perhaps I approach Sibelius differently, I do not sense any narrative in the symphonies, but I hear a journey ended in all of them. I am reminded of Stravinsky's remarks that symphonic music is not "about" anything, it is "about" music.

[jayne lee wilson]

What Stravinsky actually said was....

1930. • "For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention – in short, an aspect which, unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being".
• Igor Stravinsky (1936). An Autobiography, p. 53-54.

1962
"The over-publicized bit about expression (or non-expression) was simply a way of saying that music is supra-personal and super-real and as such beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions. It was aimed against the notion that a piece of music is in reality a transcendental idea "expressed in terms of" music, with the reductio ad absurdum implication that exact sets of correlatives must exist between a composer's feelings and his notation. It was offhand and annoyingly incomplete, but even the stupider critics could have seen that it did not deny musical expressivity, but only the validity of a type of verbal statement about musical expressivity. I stand by the remark, incidentally, though today I would put it the other way around: music expresses itself".
• Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft (1962). Expositions and Developments.

***
In some ways I agree with Stravinsky; I wouldn’t want to reduce music to a series of “correlatives between a composer's feelings and their notation”. But this must be true at least some of the time, and I think we run into a real problem if we try to deny that music does, of course, communicate emotionally - often in ways many listeners would agree upon. Or that it is somehow invalid to attempt a description of that experience.
I never really understood what “music expresses itself” means….

Like many listeners, I enjoy music in many ways; sometimes as “pure sound” (i.e without an idea of any obvious “message” or “communication”, though still with a response - sometimes as an inner calm, peacefulness, the absence of impassioned arousal; sometimes as a physical experience (through rhythm, harmony, timbre and texture, dynamic power) of movement and sensation. But this could all be described, emotionally, as hedonic.
Beyond that there is the more commonly related sense of happy or sad, triumph and tragedy, all the shades of intermediate moods. (I recall Jonathan Harvey once saying: "you should go up when the music goes up, and down when the music goes down .." How very succinct...)

Where does it all come from? I can’t see it all as merely subjective imaginary imposition of emotional concept upon abstract sound; the physical experience and the emotional seem indivisible to me, more a continuum.

***
But our responsive differences fascinate me; the end of Sibelius 1st is so abrupt, so coldly conclusive, even dismissive, that - after such climactic yearning tonal grandeur (which is never far from desperation, and never allowed to perorate; it yearns, it soars, then becomes darker, more anguished and defiant; the woodwinds offer some hope, but are soon swept aside; and after five fiercely minor key outbursts, and that menacing drumroll - suddenly dissolves, fades, and finishes curtly) it can only be a very dark one for me. There’s almost a bitterness about it, eerily pre-figuring the end of No.4.

So the contrast with the fully sung-out, explicitly triumphant coda to No.2 is very telling.
In No.1, which I find much the more interesting work "psychologically" , Sibelius seems to deliberately undermine the Romantic-Heroic ideal, the more strikingly as there are so few great symphonies which end darkly or tragically, or even in a minor key at all..

[Alain Maréchal]

the end of Sibelius 1st is so abrupt, so coldly conclusive, even dismissive, that - after such climactic yearning tonal grandeur (which is never far from desperation, and never allowed to perorate; it yearns, it soars, then becomes darker, more anguished and defiant; the woodwinds offer some hope, but are soon swept aside; and after five fiercely minor key outbursts, and that menacing drumroll - suddenly dissolves, fades, and finishes curtly) it can only be a very dark one for me. There’s almost a bitterness about it, eerily pre-figuring the end of No.4. [/FONT][/COLOR]

So the contrast with the fully sung-out, explicitly triumphant coda to No.2 is very telling.
In No.1, which I find much the more interesting work "psychologically" [/SIZE], Sibelius seems to deliberately undermine the Romantic-Heroic ideal, the more strikingly as there are so few great symphonies which end darkly or tragically, or even in a minor key at all..

I do not think a "dark" ending necessarily tragic, but I do not find it dark, to me it is a statement of satisfaction. I have heard No 2 played without an over-triumphant ending, merely by not over-extending the final chords. In fact that is how Sargent played it on the three occasions I saw him conduct it. However his recording is conventionally bombastic (and much, much, slower than those performances).

[jayne lee wilson]

I'd love to hear other views on this....how would a listener characterise Sibelius 4 for example, as perhaps compared also to - the fearsome Haydn 44 & 52, Brahms 4, Tchaikovsky 6, Mahler 6....
Then you have strange ambiguities e.g. the Mozart D Minor Piano Concerto, whose suddenly brightened conclusion verges on the bipolar, and potentially tragic from quite another POV...

[richardfinegold]

I'd love to hear other views on this....how would a listener characterise Sibelius 4 for example, as perhaps compared also to - the fearsome Haydn 44 & 52, Brahms 4, Tchaikovsky 6, Mahler 6....
Then you have strange ambiguities e.g. the Mozart D Minor Piano Concerto, whose suddenly brightened conclusion verges on the bipolar, and potentially tragic from quite another POV...

was listening to the Beethoven Thrid PC the other day, and while I've known that the piece was modeled on the Mozart D Minor for the first time I realized that in the Finale Beethoven does the same kind of instant mood change that jlw refers to as bipolar. The finale starts off with that insistent rhythmic figure and then about 2/3 way through switches to an inversion of that rhtym (shades of movements I and III in the 5th Symphony) that , on a dime, turns the mood of the work.
Bruckner will frequently do the same thing with the incessant repletion of pharases ten suddenly a key change makes it appear as the clouds have parted and the vist vistas beyond have opened up.

Sibelius Fourth? I like to agree with the critic who said it is if Sibelius is saying "no". In the great slow movement it feels like he has come right to the abyss , not to the land of Tuonela with some kind of an afterlife but staring right into the black hole of existence. In IV, I get the feelingthat he has somehow pulled out of that, but what awaits next? Not triumphal Beethovian glory, but a brief reprieve from one fate , a slight sigh of relief, but anxiety about the unknown...

[Bella Kemp]

Gosh, Jayne you write wonderfully and have sent me back to Sibelius with new insight and feeling. I have also been much moved by the comments of others on this thread. Thank you.