Swinging Back Toward Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius’ most important contributions to musical thinking may have been the notion, expressed in his last four symphonies, that great symphonic structures could be achieved without dogged adherence to sonata form or the usual division into distinct movements, and that great climactic strength could be achieved without piling on sonority with the sweaty insistence of a Bruckner.

If the swing was once away from the Finnish composer’s early, most obviously 19th-Century-related works, they are again appearing on orchestral programs, as alternatives to overworked late Tchaikovsky.

The First Symphony, completed just one year before our century began, is a lushly melodic, broodingly Slavic sort of work that makes its points by aiming for the gut and the ears.

That it requires special handling to avert flabbiness is a fact keenly appreciated by conductor Mariss Jansons, who leads his marvelously responsive Oslo Philharmonic in a reading that projects the score’s dramatic punch and lyric breadth while also being fiercely accurate (EMI/Angel 54273, with the “Karelia” Suite and “Finlandia”). The same performers will, it should be noted, bring this work to the Music Center in a few weeks.

While the earliest numbered symphonies are staging their comeback as repertory pieces, a fascination seems to be growing among our more adventurous conductors with Sibelius’ relatively unfamiliar works, whose sound world is one of rapidly shifting colors--dark hued but no less subtle than Debussy’s.

By 1914 and the completion of his Fourth Symphony (with its vague tonalities), Sibelius had embarked on a tantalizingly indirect route toward his goal of a new symphonic unity.

The Fourth is perhaps the most secretive--and seductive--of the composer’s symphonies. It seems on first encounter to lack themes, even structure, being compounded rather of reflective sound chips. It is not an easy work to perform or to hear.

Among the conductors who have successfully solved this elusive composition is Herbert Blomstedt, who, with his San Francisco Symphony at peak form, clarifies its workings without demystifying its emotional content (London 425 858).

Nothing here is glossed over, no detail of dynamics or instrumentation casually treated by Blomstedt. Yet there’s no feeling of calculation or contrivance, but rather a sense of flow--and of the potentially explosive tension that Sibelius built into this tough, endlessly fascinating work.

Blomstedt and the San Franciscans are no less convincing in the more familiar and accessible Fifth Symphony, which remains the most perfectly conceived example of the composer’s desire to achieve and maintain grandeur without taking forever about it or needlessly pummeling our ears.

Again, orchestral execution is precise and polished in tone, while London’s spacious yet detailed recording obviates the problems inherent in the orchestra’s home, Davies Symphony Hall (soon to be addressed by reconstruction).

All seven Sibelius symphonies and several of the composer’s tone poems were recorded by Simon Rattle and his City of Birmingham Symphony (except No. 5, where it’s the Philharmonia) between 1984 and 1988. These have been reissued on four mid-priced EMI/Angel CDs in the following couplings: No. 1, with “The Oceanides” (64119); Nos. 2 and 3 (64120); Nos. 4 and 6 (64121), and Nos. 5 and 7, with “Scene With Cranes” and “Night Ride and Sunrise” (64122).

Rattle seems least comfortable amid the grandiose gestures of the first two symphonies. Tempos occasionally sag, most notably in the slow movement of the First Symphony, which peters out when it should maintain momentum while winding slowly to its conclusion.

But the more enigmatic and finespun the symphonies, the more Rattle’s attention and gifts are engaged. In Nos. 4 and 6 and above all the final, darkly radiant No. 7, in which Sibelius succeeds in creating his symphonic unity, the conductor is in his element, savoring every subtle harmonic and dynamic turning while drawing playing of exceptional pointedness from the Birmingham orchestra.

It should be be noted that Rattle--like Lorin Maazel in his recent coupling of Nos. 4 and 5 (Sony 46499), the first release in a projected Sibelius symphony cycle with his Pittsburgh Symphony--favors tempos that may be slow when measured in real time.

But, with the exceptions previously noted, Rattle’s interpretations are compact and cohesive, qualities achieved in Sibelius’ scores with carefully gauged relative, rather than absolute, tempos.

Herbert Glass is a regular contributor to Calendar.