The Snowshoed Sibelius

Started by Dancing Divertimentian, April 16, 2007, 08:39:57 PM

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Elgarian

Quote from: Opus106 on August 15, 2011, 10:53:38 AM
I didn't notice your return proper, Alan, apart from a 'sighting' reported by Sara. It's good to have you back. :)

What a kind thing to say. Thanks Navneeth.

karlhenning

I slung a Welcome back on some thread or other, Alan : )

DavidW

I've heard yet another Sibelius symphony on the radio, and I'm thinking that I really want to finally buy the Vanska cycle. :)

Brian

Quote from: Elgarian on August 15, 2011, 10:43:21 AM
Brian'll be interested in this - I bet he's got a set by now - have you Brian?

;D ;D ;D
I think I mentioned somewhere else that I was seriously considering it - added it to my shopping cart at MDT - put it back on my wishlist - read your post and when you got to the description of the Fourth started thinking "oh man, really need to hear this," and then when you ask this at the end I laughed. You bet I'm interested.  ;D Was put off by a couple initial reports that the set was "just" blaring Soviet loudness but yours is a very hearty rebuttal.

Elgarian

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 15, 2011, 11:35:25 AM
I slung a Welcome back on some thread or other, Alan : )

I got it Karl, and I slung some sort of thanks back at you, there. (Wherever it was.)

Elgarian

#845
Quote from: Brian on August 15, 2011, 11:53:33 AMI think I mentioned somewhere else that I was seriously considering it - added it to my shopping cart at MDT - put it back on my wishlist - read your post and when you got to the description of the Fourth started thinking "oh man, really need to hear this," and then when you ask this at the end I laughed. You bet I'm interested.  ;D Was put off by a couple initial reports that the set was "just" blaring Soviet loudness but yours is a very hearty rebuttal.

I can see why those reports would be made. When I first got it, and listened to the first, there were indeed moments when I wondered if the excitement was really just the result of blaringness (let's adopt the word as ours, just for the thrill of discarding it as not useful here), but those doubts fell away the more symphonies I listened to, and the more often I listened. The point is - doesn't matter which symphony I choose, I hear more detail, more nuance, more power subtly held in check. Tell you what it's like - one of those great Venetian painters - Veronese or Titian or someone like that. They could lay a brushstroke with immense power at a single stroke, and yet with, simultaneously, the utmost sparkling delicacy. These recordings give the same sort of feel.

In the 1st movement of the fourth there's a little four-note motif that turns up now and then, and for the very first time, with Rozhdestvensky, I recognised that it's the same four-note motif that Elgar uses to begin one of his 'Windflower' tunes (first four notes of the lower example in my avatar). You can tell me it's not quite the same if you like - it might be so, and I don't mind - the point is it gave me a way in. It's a plaintive little rising sequence that seems to require an answer. And knowing how Elgar answers it, with a kind of wistful sigh (see my avatar again for the remaining three notes) makes for a fabulous comparison with the way Sibelius tackles it - utterly, utterly different. Darker. Emphatic. Even with a hint of blaringness!

I mean, seriously Brian, I never thought there'd be a day when I would listen to the 4th with this degree of fascinated attentiveness. Shoot down all this stuff in flames if you like, and call it fanciful - doesn't matter. I'm in there digging, now, with everything admittedly provisional, but with everything to play for.

Brahmsian

Quote from: Elgarian on August 15, 2011, 01:26:27 PM

I mean, seriously Brian, I never thought there's be a day when I would listen to the 4th with this degree of fascinated attentiveness. Shoot down all this stuff in flames if you like, and call it fanciful - doesn't matter. I'm in there digging, now, with everything admittedly provisional, but with everything to play for.

Lately, I just keep listening repeatedly to the 4th, and the 1st (disc 1 of Maazel/WP).  Can't get enough of it!  The only symphony on that set that I skip is the 7th (I don't find Maazel/WP do it justice).  For this, I go to Davis/BSO's blistering rendition of the 7th.

Brian

Quote from: Elgarian on August 15, 2011, 01:26:27 PM
I mean, seriously Brian, I never thought there'd be a day when I would listen to the 4th with this degree of fascinated attentiveness. Shoot down all this stuff in flames if you like, and call it fanciful - doesn't matter. I'm in there digging, now, with everything admittedly provisional, but with everything to play for.

I'm not going to shoot it all down in flames and call it fanciful until I know you're back for good and can't be scared off. ;) Nah, no need to of course; since this thread was last bustling (again mostly your doing! That's why we needed you back), I've been slowly discovering the Fourth for myself, even listen absolutely gripped by it sometimes (Maazel/Pittsburgh, though I suspect his performance is not actually the best but just the one that's caught my fancy). I really want to hear how Rozhdestvensky does it; when finally coming around to the piece a few months ago it seemed that the more dramatic (faster, but coincidentally?) readings helped dissolve the clouded gloom and clarify the tragedy of the symphony, just as you say.

DavidRoss

My goodness!  Alan's back.  ;D  And folks are discussing Sibelius again.  8)  And Brian, Alan, and Ray are all digging the 4th.  Way  8) !

Dave, I've never regretted purchasing any of Vänskä's Sibelius recordings.  His symphony set is one of my faves--and damn near the polar opposite of Rozhdestvensky's.
"Maybe the problem most of you have ... is that you're not listening to Barbirolli." ~Sarge

"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." ~Margaret Thatcher

DavidW

Quote from: DavidRoss on August 15, 2011, 03:40:08 PM
My goodness!  Alan's back.  ;D  And folks are discussing Sibelius again.  8)  And Brian, Alan, and Ray are all digging the 4th.  Way  8) !

Dave, I've never regretted purchasing any of Vänskä's Sibelius recordings.  His symphony set is one of my faves--and damn near the polar opposite of Rozhdestvensky's.

Awesome Dave!  I think I'll pull the trigger. :)

eyeresist

Quote from: Elgarian on August 15, 2011, 10:43:21 AM
But when I got the Rozhdestvensky box, mysterious things began to happen. At first I thought it was excitingly different - but probably offering no more than a quirky second string to my mainly Segerstamian bow. But then suddenly, the 4th and the 6th (which I'd never managed to get into, in decades of listening - suddenly I say, I was listening to these with fascination; at times significantly moved; hearing aspects of them that I'd never heard before. I listened to the 4th on three successive days, keen to get at the heart of it: responding to it now as chiefly tragic, where once I'd found it merely dull and bleak. That would have been unthinkable without this Rozhdestvensky performance to lure me on.

Wow, I must get this now!

Dancing Divertimentian

Quote from: DavidW on August 15, 2011, 03:55:39 PM
Awesome Dave!  I think I'll pull the trigger. :)

It's my favorite set, too, Dave. Pull it! ;D


Veit Bach-a baker who found his greatest pleasure in a little cittern which he took with him even into the mill and played while the grinding was going on. In this way he had a chance to have the rhythm drilled into him. And this was the beginning of a musical inclination in his descendants. JS Bach

Mirror Image

Quote from: DavidW on August 15, 2011, 11:41:25 AM
I've heard yet another Sibelius symphony on the radio, and I'm thinking that I really want to finally buy the Vanska cycle. :)

The Vanska cycle is outstanding. This cycle came in the 15-CD set on BIS I bought a year or so ago called The Essential Sibelius. At the time it was cheaper to buy this 15-CD set than to buy the set separately. Go figure. ???

Elgarian

Isn't it interesting to see this variety of response to the various available recordings? I wonder what it is about Sibelius that generates such strong polarisations? It's easy to see why it happens - there's such a marked difference from one set of performances of the symphonies to another, that there are horses for every course. But quite how this variety of interpretation comes about is a mystery to me. To recap, so far my own journey during the last 10 years has taken me as follows:

1. Sakari and the Icelanders Lively and generally OK, but missing the heights.

2. Colin Davis/LSO on RCA. Never heard Sibelius sound so tedious. Gave the set away (and apologised to the recipient).

3. Barbirolli/Halle Again, generally OK but somehow not so sparkling as I'd hoped it would be.

4. Vanska/Lahti in the BIS Essentials box. I thought at first that this was going to be the best I could get. Precise and sparkling, and yet, and yet, somewhere inside I knew I was secretly hoping for something more.

5. Segerstam/Helsinki POW! I thought THIS was IT! Blew me away. Vast, sweeping, and huge, built upon caves of ice!

But all these responses were based on a lifelong love of the 1st, 2nd. 3rd, and 5th, and a lifelong failure to come to grips with the 4th, 6th, and (to a lesser extent thanks to Brian's recent help, the 7th). That's where Rozhdestvensky's cavalry comes in, brass blaring, to change all that. I can't ask more of a conductor than to reverse my perception of music that I'd largely given up on.

But looking back at that list, and thinking about the scale of the differences, I suppose it's not surprising that we get such variety of recommendation in this area.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Quote from: Elgarian on August 15, 2011, 10:43:21 AM
I've been trying to understand what the big difference is - what caused the breakthrough. It must have something to do with the Russian-ness of it perhaps. But there's a kind of beautiful but dangerous raw crispness to the soundscape of it. The music sounds as if it were born from splintered ice. I think Ruskin's valuable term, 'savageness' (which describes the kind of imperfection one gets when art is operating at its limits, perhaps even hovering close to failure) might be helpful here. When I listen to my revered Segerstam after Rozhdestvensky, he sounds imprecise, blowsy, opulent, rounded off by comparison.

With respect to the 4th and 6th specifically, one thing Rozh does with these symphonies is get the various tempi and their relationships right so that they hang together properly. Two problematic movements are the slow mvt. of the 4th and the finale of the 6th. Often they seem disjointed or episodic, but with Rozh at the helm they flow convincing from one episode to another and add up to a convincing whole. My mind doesn't wander during these mvts. as it often does under other conductors.

Otherwise, what you call "savageness" is something that strikes me as rusticity or a down-to-earth feeling, something that reminds me of Finno-Ugric folk music. Listen to 3/ii in Rozh's account, esp. the pizzicato strings: virtually the sound of the kantele expressed in orchestration.
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

Renfield

#855
Hello Alan!

As everyone's said, it's good to have you back. I have myself just returned from a long absence, and it's nice to see another familiar 'face': particularly as your characteristically passionate advocacy for the Rozhdestvensky far surpassed my efforts. :D


Regarding tempi and their relationships - what I primarily refer to when I say 'form', in music, as in 'Vänskä is a formalist conductor' - I think Velimir identifies the 'Rozh effect' quite accurately: much like Giulini, he maintains his underlying tempi very precisely, like an iron scaffold; or a cake mold, that the musicians can then fill with all the gusto they can muster, without distorting the structure. This way, you get the best of both worlds: a very well-defined reading guiding (vs. competing with) a powerful performance from the orchestra from start to finish, in manner that feels entirely natural.

Clearly - again much like Giulini in his Brahms, Beethoven and Bruckner - there are drawbacks to this, as even this kind of 'sneakily monolithic' (vs. 'Klemperer monolithic' - a big old block of shapely sound) approach robs the music of that last ounce of mercurial fluidity that Vänskä, to name the most prominent example, imbues Sibelius with. And there's less mystique, less wavering: Rozhdestvensky's 4th feels noticeably less suffocating than, say, Karajan's. But like I suggested above, it remains a great performance, becoming a gateway into the symphony for people who don't desire symphonic suffocation.

DavidW

Don, John ;D thanks I'll be sure to tell you what I think of Vanska when I listen.

Alan, Segerstam was a wow moment for me too, passionate performances!  I think I liked the Barbirolli more than you did, but for the older performances I liked the Bernstein cycle on columbia.

Have not heard Rozhdestvensky but I like his Shostakovich and recently got to hear his Enescu which I thought was also first rate.

Opus106

Quote from: DavidW on August 16, 2011, 04:51:39 AM
Don, John ;D

A subject that Sibelius never took up. Did he?

Moving on...
Regards,
Navneeth

Brian

Quote from: Elgarian on August 16, 2011, 12:53:22 AM
4. Vanska/Lahti in the BIS Essentials box. I thought at first that this was going to be the best I could get. Precise and sparkling, and yet, and yet, somewhere inside I knew I was secretly hoping for something more.

I'd agree with your opinion of the Vanska set. The Fifth seems to embody my reaction to the whole cycle: it's extremely well-done, avoids every single mistake on my pitifully long check-list of reasons to consign a Fifth to the bin, and puts together a rousing finale, yet for some reason after it's finished a little part of me still says it wasn't satisfied. "Secretly hoping for more" expresses that. Of course, I feel exactly the same way about Vanska's Beethoven: my critical brain keeps saying, "good...good...correct" but my heart never joins in the chorus.

I felt the same way about The King's Speech too, so I might just be a heartless bastard.  ;D

Quote from: DavidW on August 16, 2011, 04:51:39 AM
Alan, Segerstam was a wow moment for me too, passionate performances!  I think I liked the Barbirolli more than you did, but for the older performances I liked the Bernstein cycle on columbia.

I haven't had a Sibelius binge since the last time Alan was 'round, but Segerstam is still my top choice in 1, 3, and 7. I'm really looking forward to hearing Rozhdestvensky's Third based on Renfield's comment and an electrifying 30-second clip over at Presto. It sounds like the extraordinary, rhythmically unstoppable Mustonen reading, but at a more sensible/mainstream tempo.

Sergeant Rock

Quote from: Brian on August 16, 2011, 05:13:37 AM
....I might just be a heartless bastard.  ;D

Me too. I admire more than I love the Vänskä cycle.

Sarge
the phone rings and somebody says,
"hey, they made a movie about
Mahler, you ought to go see it.
he was as f*cked-up as you are."
                               --Charles Bukowski, "Mahler"