SACDs - Sibelius

Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 are poles apart in their musical style and make a highly interesting pairing for this new release. Symphony No. 1 is rooted in the symphonic tradition and has a particular tunefulness reminiscent of Tchaikovsky, whereas Symphony No. 4 is highly original and introverted, often being seen as modern and ‘cubist’ by listeners in the 1890s.

The Minnesota Orchestra and its music director Osmo Vänskä were highly praised for their previous release of Symphonies Nos. 2 & 5 (BISSACD1986), being called ‘a fine start to what may be the benchmark cycle for the 21st century’ by Gramophone, and nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance.

Vänskä has really enhanced the quality of the Minnesota Orchestra since he took the position of musical director in 2003. He has since had his tenure extended many times and continues to carve an international reputation for the ensemble.

This release has advertising planned in Gramophone magazine as part of a ‘new orchestral features on BIS’.

Anu Komsi, Finland’s ‘coloratura assoluta’, here presents a wide-ranging programme, from mad scenes and rage arias from 18th- and 19th-century operas, to Alyabyev’s ever-soaring Nightingale and the silvery tinkling of Lakmé’s Bell Song.

Komsi also performs later examples of coloratura, including Glière’s glittering Concerto for coloratura and orchestra, and La Machine de l’être by the composer John Zorn – a work which she premiered in New York City in 2011.

The disc closes with a thoroughly idiomatic performance of Sibelius’ Luonnotar, with its text from the Finnish national epos Kalevala.

Throughout the programme, Anu Komsi is supported by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo.

Following the success of their recordings of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Petrushka, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Andrew Litton here perform The Firebird.

The Firebird was Igor Stravinsky’s first full-length ballet, but not his first collaboration with Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes – he orchestrated two piano compositions by Chopin (also featured on this disc) for use in another project.

Andrew Litton here conducts the original ballet score.

The disc also includes arrangements of pieces by Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, ending with Stravinsky’s tongue-in-cheek 1955 Greeting Prelude for the 80th birthday of Pierre Monteux.

The Bergen Philharmonic’s disc featuring The Rite of Spring and Petrushka was met with critical acclaim – short-listed for a 2011 Gramophone Award, named Editor’s Choice in Classic FM Magazine.

BIS present a new recording of Jean Sibelius’s Symphonies 2 and 5 from the Minnesota Orchestra and their Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä.

Beginning in the early 1990s, seminal recordings with Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra of tone poems and the seven symphonies stood at the forefront of a new interpretative approach to the composer’s music.

Vänskä’s recordings of Sibelius over the past 20 years form the backbone of the label’s newly completed Sibelius Edition.

This disc with the Minnesota Orchestra follows an acclaimed cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies, and most recently a recording of Bruckner’s Fourth (‘Romantic’) Symphony.

The Sibelius expert Robert Layton presents the Second Symphony as ‘the symphony by which many music lovers find their way to Sibelius’, and quotes the composer in a comment about symphonic form: ‘a river with innumerable tributaries feeding it before it broadens majestically and flows into the sea’.