Disappointments?

[Richard Barrett]

Sorry HS, but if you answer my post by quoting at me a dictionary definition of a word you didn't actually use, what do you expect?

Perhaps we should return to the subject of Sibelius and stop bickering about semantics?

Indeed - so how, as ferneyhoughgeliebte asks, could Paavo Berglund (born 1929) have helped that composer to write out any of his manuscripts (last ones written also in 1929)?

[richardfinegold]

Sorry HS, but if you answer my post by quoting at me a dictionary definition of a word you didn't actually use, what do you expect?



Indeed - so how, as ferneyhoughgeliebte asks, could Paavo Berglund (born 1929) have helped that composer to write out any of his manuscripts (last ones written also in 1929)?

Didn't Sibelis--as with many other Composers-tinker with his scores for decades after they were published?

[Richard Barrett]

Didn't Sibelis--as with many other Composers-tinker with his scores for decades after they were published?

I suppose he may have, though I'm not a Sibelius expert. Berglund's obituary in the Guardian states "Berglund corrected [Sibelius'] scores and, where he considered it necessary, was not averse to retouching the orchestration to ensure better balance." In other words, far from preserving the "composer's intentions" he had no problem overriding them when he thought it necessary.

[vinteuil]

Berglund's obituary in the Guardian states "Berglund corrected [Sibelius'] scores and, where he considered it necessary, was not averse to retouching the orchestration to ensure better balance." In other words, far from preserving the "composer's intentions" he had no problem overriding them when he thought it necessary.

.... from wiki :

'Berglund sometimes courted controversy with his re-touching of orchestral parts; as he said in a Gramophone interview in October 1978, "Sibelius was a superb orchestrator, but right up to the very end he made strange dynamics which I find I have to change. In the Second Symphony you don't have to alter so much, but funnily enough there is a lot that needs altering in the Seventh Symphony ... My attitude was "werktreu" which in German means roughly 'be true to the work'. But you see, the composers didn't always know; they could have given it more thought. Bruckner, when things were suggested to him by Lowe and Schalk (who were certainly not stupid) told them to go ahead and do it. Maybe he was weak and should have argued sometimes a little bit more, but on the other hand many of their suggestions are fine." '

[jayne lee wilson]

I just bought the Sony Sibelius Bernstein box. Afraid that I have to disagree, Gradus; I didn't like any of it except the VC. Sibelius isn't Mahler but someone forgot to tell Lenny

Absolutely, Richard.
I gave the CD Boxset (beautifully-remastered, mini-LP-sleeve replicas) just a few days' house-room before returning it, with some relief, to Amazon.
(I recall enjoying - well, at least some of the original Sony issue (I think 1 & 5 stood out back in the day), but time, ears and Sibelian perceptions all change...)

Now, I can almost hear Vanska/Lahti as a successor to my various much-admired Berglunds ( I've spent many rewarding hours with the Bournemouth and the COE cycles, less hours & fewer rewards in Helsinki). But I'd have to say more when time allows. Vanska in Minnesota develops his approach further and - so far as I can hear now, very beneficially...

[Richard Barrett]

Sibelius was a superb orchestrator, but right up to the very end he made strange dynamics which I find I have to change. In the Second Symphony you don't have to alter so much, but funnily enough there is a lot that needs altering in the Seventh Symphony ... My attitude was "werktreu" which in German means roughly 'be true to the work'. But you see, the composers didn't always know; they could have given it more thought.

I suppose this could be construed as "helping Sibelius to write out the manuscripts"... but god save us from this kind of well-meaning distortion!

[Daniel]

I can't ever remember being more disappointed at a CD purchase than Rattle's Berlin Philharmonic Mahler 5. I found it absurdly over nuanced. I never tried it again, though writing this makes me think perhaps I should.

[gradus]

I think the Sibelius 5 with Bernstein/LSO was only ever broadcast and home recorded, it was at the Edinburgh Festival in the early eighties and I still have an open reel tape of it. Didn't strike me as a particularly Mahlerian view of the piece and I've not heard a performance to equal Bernstein's extraordinary sense of the architecture of the score especially the brass writing in the closing bars with magnificent playing from the LSO, so often I find conductors just don't seem to get the balance as I like it (!) and the brass phrasing can seem a little random in some performances, chacun etc........ I would like to hear the Sony box performance though (NYPO?), perhaps it will turn up on Spotify.

[Richard Barrett]

I can't ever remember being more disappointed at a CD purchase than Rattle's Berlin Philharmonic Mahler 5. I found it absurdly over nuanced.

I agree.

[mikealdren]

Beecham's Leminkainen's Return is an absolute cracker, it positively exudes excitement. Idiomatic - who cares?

His En Saga is terrific too. Sounds is obviously dated but it's so rhythmically exciting, nothing else I have heard comes close.

[ahinton]

I suppose this could be construed as "helping Sibelius to write out the manuscripts"... but god save us from this kind of well-meaning distortion!

Almost analogous to "helping the police with their enquiries", one might think...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Almost analogous to "helping the police with their enquiries", one might think...

And today most students use SIBELIUS to help write out their own manuscripts.

[ahinton]

And today most students use SIBELIUS to help write out their own manuscripts.

!!!

A few do use Finale, though and I somehow doubt that this would have helped Mr Berglund tweak Sibelius's final completed symphony, given that it doesn't have one...

[jayne lee wilson]

His En Saga is terrific too. Sounds is obviously dated but it's so rhythmically exciting, nothing else I have heard comes close.

Tried Kurt Sanderling? Stunning Saga, and the Night Ride and Sunrise is another but-for-all-time, too....one of the very few recordings of anything that curb my hunger for alternatives.
(Truly great Sibelian anyway, but if anything, he tends to be more more dramatic in the poems than in the symphonies, and the sound of that Jesus-Christus-kirche acoustic doesn't hurt..)

(Berlin Classics, but if you seek out the King Record or Denon Japanese remasters, then.... or even ...)

[Barbirollians]

The Isserlis/Harding Dvorak Cello Concerto on Hyperion - it just does not gel for me at all . Felt that Isserlis should have asked Mackerras years before to accompany