The Snowshoed Sibelius

[Karl Henning]

Excellent, Jessop!  One's ears always get bigger . . . .

[Mirror Image]

And I'm so happy you did dig up this post! Wonderful read and great article.

For a long time I was never much impressed by Sibelius's compositions. It was only when I was fifteen that I grew to enjoy the second symphony. The fourth became one of my favourite pieces of music ever right as I was listening to it for the first time. Perhaps it was because it sounded so different to anything else I had heard previously...who knows.

Glad my copy-and-paste skills are being appreciated. Yes, this is such an excellent symphony, but what would you say your 'Top 5 Favorite Works' from Sibelius are? Have dug deep into his oeuvre or have you just been swimming in the shallow end of the pool? Inquiring minds want to know.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Glad my copy-and-paste skills are being appreciated. Yes, this is such an excellent symphony, but what would you say your 'Top 5 Favorite Works' from Sibelius are? Have dug deep into his oeuvre or have you just been swimming in the shallow end of the pool? Inquiring minds want to know.

Well I've only known his music for a few years, but I've come to adore the 7th and 6th symphonies in particular as well as all the others. Other favourites include Kullervo, The Tempest (any version!) and Luonnotar...but I am also very fond of the Scènes Historiques and Scaramouche and Tapiola as well. One piece I can certainly live without is that extraordinarily bland piano sonata in F major (I forgive him if he happened to be drunk at the time though).

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Interestingly, I listened to only one Sibelius's composition on his birthday: Luonnotar. It never ceases to amaze me.

[jlaurson]

A Survey of Sibelius Cycles

updated -- and in the process of a much more thorough updating.
http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2009/05/survey-of-sibelius-cycles.html

To that end, if anyone could provide the following date:

Earliest and last recording dates (of the symphonies, not other works that may be included on one set or another) of:


Blomstedt / SFSO / Decca (1989-94?)

Jaervi I / Goetheburg / BIS (1982-85?)

Jaervi II / G'burg / DG (2001-05?)

Leaper / Slovak PO / Naxos (1989-90)

Inkinnen I / Naxos

Inkinnen II ()

Gibson  / Chandos

Lintu / ArtHaus Musik

Storgards

Watanabe I & II

Volmer

[North Star]

You might want to correct Wanatabe to Watanabe.

[Sergeant Rock]

Earliest and last recording dates (of the symphonies, not other works that may be included on one set or another) of:

Blomstedt / SFSO / Decca (1989-95)

Jaervi I / Goetheburg / BIS (1982-85)

[jlaurson]

You might want to correct Wanatabe to Watanabe.

While I'm at it. 

Blomstedt / SFSO / Decca (1989-95)

Jaervi I / Goetheburg / BIS (1982-85)

Thanks!!!

[Brian]

Inkinen I / Naxos (2008-2009)

Inkinen II / Naxos Japan (March-April 2013)

Storgards (2012-2013)

There ya go!

P.S. Inkinen not Inkinnen.

[Brian]

Thanks!! Esp. Inkinen II had me baffled for a while.
Klaus must have gotten good money to record a complete Japanese Sib-Cycle with Inkinen... but just not quite enough to make it an international release. :-)

Now I think I am only missing exact dates on Volmer's cycle (ABC) -- which was recorded around 2007. Aussies here who know?

These all have booklets posted on Naxos Music Library (and many on eClassical). Volmer is 2007-2008.

[Madiel]

Volmer was definitely released in 2010, don't know about exact recording dates. My Australian-based Google-fu appears to be insufficient for that purpose.

EDIT: AHA! I got lucky!

All the symphonies were recorded in 2007 and 2008. The Violin Concerto which is also in the set wasn't until 2009.

[jlaurson]

Updated


A Survey of Sibelius Cycles


Dates added and properly alphabetized.

This survey, the first I wrote for ionarts, has been completely revamped and been put into an order, namely alphabetical, by conductor. This can be cumbersome when updating, but it is the easiest to search. Initially, only readily available cycles were meant to be included in these surveys, but they have grown a little more ambitious, since. This brings about the addition of Jukka-Pekka Saraste's first cycle on RCA (1987-88), which is very much oop. Saraste's second cycle was recorded live in St. Petersburg. The individual releases on Warner-Teldec-Apex and Finlandia (the latter covers almost all the smaller orchestral works as well as the Violin Concerto and the Humoresques by other conductors and orchestras) are identical to the set that proclaims "live from St. Petersburg" (1993). It also means that I have included the first cycle of Akeo Watanabe, from 1962 (the first in stereo, pace Leonard Bernstein), even though it never made it from its Sony/Epic LPs onto CD. I have not (yet?) added Paavo Berglund's Sibelius recordings with the LPO, although arguably they are as much an incomplete cycle as Bernstein's Vienna one, with four symphonies. You can find it here; it would have been his 4th such cycle.

[André]

I haven't read all 116 pages of this thread  , so I don't know if this disc has ever been mentioned:



Recommended by Drasko, it contains the 3rd symphony under Mrawinsky in 2 versions. Actually they are one and the same, except for the remastering. The first is a regular mono, hissy and ungimmicked recording, whereas the second is in 'processed stereo'. Hiss has been removed and the sound still seems quite natural to me. In any event, this must count as one of the most extraordinary interpretations of any Sibelius symphony ever recorded.

I didn't recommend it in the 'Recordings You Are Considering' thread, as it seems to be either impossible to find or sold at a mortgage kind of price. If you can lay your hands on it don't hesitate. You only get the symphony, but it's really worth it. This is Sibelius' most cryptic, unscrutable symphony, his most rythmically alert too. Very hard to get right. Most other interpretations downplay the ruggedness and the ultra-modernity of the score in an attempt to 'unify' the symphony. Mrawinsky transforms it into something like 'Three Pieces for Orchestra' or a 'Symphony in Three Movements' on a giant scale.

[bhodges]

The Minnesota Orchestra's all-Sibelius concert at Carnegie Hall (March 3), with Osmo Vänskä and violinist Hilary Hahn, is on WQXR.org - a terrific concert, for those who like live broadcasts.

Sibelius: Symphony No. 3
Sibelius: Violin Concerto
Sibelius: Symphony No. 1

http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/hilary-hahn-and-minnesota-play-sibelius/

--Bruce

[vandermolen]

Am greatly enjoying this - have I missed the discussion about it?
[asin]B011QAHAGE[/asin]

[Mirror Image]

Am greatly enjoying this - have I missed the discussion about it?
[asin]B011QAHAGE[/asin]

Jedermann (Everyman) is one those odd Sibelius works that hasn't really found it's way into listeners' psyches yet or so it seems. Personally, I really like the work. It's kind of strangely lopsided work (strange overall structure), but there's really some gorgeous music found therein. I haven't heard the Segerstam performance (yet), but I love what Vanska did with it on BIS.

[kishnevi]

Seems appropriate to note the existence of this book

[Mirror Image]

Speaking of Kullervo, I need to revisit this work. I own several fantastic performances of it, but I think my favorite is Vanska's on BIS with Neeme Jarvi's smoldering performance (also on BIS) coming in a distant second.

[Madiel]

The things you learn when you're a completist trivia-head...

Complete symphonies are a dime a dozen, but I became curious whether anyone had ever aimed for a complete set of the orchestral music more generally. And the answer turns out to be yes: Neeme Jarvi did on BIS.

Only it never got fully presented as such. The first 13 LPs exist, labelled as "Volume 1", "Volume 2" etc at the top. But it seems when the CDs came out they were never labelled in this way, and the last half a dozen albums were apparently only released on CD. (Weirdly, it seems the volume of orchestral songs was deliberately excluded from the list, even though it includes not just orchestrations of piano songs but also uniquely orchestral works like Luonnotar. Whereas volume 13 also has vocal works).

There were other factors, too. Right near the end of the series, BIS decided to change from "complete Orchestral music" to "complete Sibelius", and Jarvi's orchestral work was swept up in this numbering system, retrospectively applied to 29 existing albums including most of his. And at the same time, Vanska started his recordings and was covering the same territory, pushing Jarvi's recordings into the background.

Come to think of it I wouldn't be surprised if Vanska recorded "complete orchestral music" as well, but it was never labelled in this way.

All of this is because I'm increasingly aware how much other orchestral music there is besides the symphonies. And, as I've previously said, I'm not really that keen on the BIS jumbo Sibelius edition that insists on including every version and arrangement known to mankind.

[vandermolen]

Speaking of Kullervo, I need to revisit this work. I own several fantastic performances of it, but I think my favorite is Vanska's on BIS with Neeme Jarvi's smoldering performance (also on BIS) coming in a distant second.

I like the earlier Paavo Berglund/Bournemouth SO version on EMI.