The first time i played this disc, i felt that Jarvi was bringing out the beauty in every little phrase, lighting on every nuance, and showing everyone 'here, look at this little bit', indeed i found that he would bring forth startling new sonorities and ideas, i would hear things that i didn't know were in this work, but... many times at the expense of a long term vision for the flow of the narrative, and even though on this listen i still felt somewhat the same, maybe it's not so pronounced, it does feel like an average reading.
Paavo Jarvi is Estonian, he was born in 1962, and he will be 49 next week, of course everyone knows his famous Father, and i'm sure that upbringing introduced him to lots of Composers, he recorded this disc in 2000, the front cover is a very good one [by Sheila Rock], a close up head and shoulders of Jarvi, good use of the hand, and it's good to have a dark background, and dark clothing, it highlights the skin tones, nice sharp photo as well.
This is a work i've played so often, that sometimes i feel i've 'played it out of my system', that i don't have that same sense of wonderment when anticipating playing it again, but once i get going, the thrill comes back, this is one of the excellent reasons you should have a number of different versions available of a certain work, it brings freshness and a fresh perspective to the experience, on this listening, no one movement really stood out amongst the rest, i guess i liked the fourth movement 'March to the Scaffold', full of lots of imagery, in a 54 minute work it only takes up 9% of the whole, and yet it's the link to life and death, our Protagonist is alive at the start, but dead by the end, Jarvi brings out the rhythmic rumble of the timpani at the start [0:00-0:27], nice offstage sounding, along with the muted sharp brass, and the pleading bassoon playing in its high registers [0:40-0:50], and in its lower registers later [1:17-1:36], some of the following brass forte's sound a little tame, especially the braying and rasping of tubas, needs to be more demonic, but still enjoyable.
Here's Leonard Bernstein conducting the fourth movement on YouTube.
