This is Sibelius's best Symphony, a work of genius, he fills this Symphony with excitement and invention, each of the four movements have superb tunes, the brass especially are at the fore, recorded superbly on this recording, the 'warning' on the front is a bit naive / silly, but it's no joke that the recording is tremendous, a great Symphony can be spoilt by a poor recording, i'm re-listening to this now, and it's hard to concentrate on typing, i just want to listen, i played this work / disc early in my Blog experience [1st April 2010].
Neeme Jarvi is Estonian, though he has now emigrated to America, he is 75, he recorded a cycle of Sibelius Symphonies for BIS, he recorded this disc in 1983, the front cover photo is by Goran Algard, a nice shot, but i'm not wowed by BIS front covers.
The first and second movements were tremendous, but the fourth movement sums up everything that the Symphony is trying to do, culminating in one of Sibelius's most gut wrenching and satisfying endings, Sibelius welds the last two movements together, and creates a 'dam' build up that just breaks into the finale [5:59+], on this recording the two movements are fused into one track listing, so i will give the timings for the track, and timings minus the third movement as well, like i said all this energy is unleashed, with the brass blasting out a sort of rhythmic beat, dot dot dot, dot dot dot, etc [5:59-6:27 / 0:00-0:28], with the trumpet making some nice noise, crystal clear in this recording, halfway through there's again that tremendous build up, that unleashes its force just like before [12:16-12:44 / 6:17-6:45], and right at the end there's one helluva tremendous brass fanfare [17:42+ / 11:43+], and i just love the way the high brass steal in [17:53-18:36 / 11:54-12:37], and really power up into a climax [18:20 / 12:21], an ending that leaves you breathless.
Here's Takeshi Ooi conducting the fourth movement on YouTube.
Here's Takeshi Ooi conducting the fourth movement on YouTube.
