Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 82

Mark Obert-Thorn, producer and audio restoration engineer

This is the last of three volumes containing the complete Sibelius recordings conducted by Robert Kajanus in performances which carry the composer’s imprimatur. Sibelius said of Kajanus that “there are none who have gone deeper and given [my symphonies] more feeling and beauty”. The volatility and extended climaxes of Symphony No. 3 are perfectly shaped. Symphony No. 5 also takes flight majestically, not least in the ‘swan theme’ of the finale.

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’.

At first glance, Sibelius and Lutosławski may seem odd bedfellows on disc, but not in this instance. This disc couples the two works for which these composers are probably best remembered. Sibelius’ Symphony No.5 and Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Interestingly, Lutosławski, in admiration of Sibelius, travelled to Finland in May 1955 to meet the venerable composer at his own Sibelius Festival.

‘Sibelius’s music is characterised by constant switches of tempo but Saraste, conducting from memory, negotiated the gear changes with idiomatic empathy, steering his players confidently through the turbulent shoals of the start of the finale to the culminating oceanic currents.’ Barry Millington, Evening Standard, 16 October 2008.

Since 2010 Jukka-Pekka Saraste has been Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne. He has also been Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic since 2006. His discography includes the complete symphonies of Sibelius and Nielsen with the Finnish Radio Orchestra, as well as works by Bartók, Dutilleux, Mussorgsky and Prokofiev with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. His most recent recordings are Mahler Symphony No. 6 and DVD releases of Sibelius Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5 with the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as Mahler Symphony No. 9 with the WDR Symphony Orchestra.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1958) was one of the greatest symphonists of the 20th century and his music is as popular today as it was when he died over 50 years ago. This set contains the final four of Sibelius's seven symphonies, written between the years 1911 and 1924. Although he lived for almost another 30 years Sibelius wrote nothing after 1929. It is reputed that he wrote an Eighth Symphony but this is believed to have been destroyed by the composer.

Jean Sibelius was born in 1865 as Julius Christian but adopted the French equivalent and is now always known as such. He soon established himself as Finland’s greatest composer and the most powerful symphonist to have come from Scandinavia and the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. The first work to be composed in this collection recorded by Mariss Jansons and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra is arguably his most famous: Finlandia, written in 1899, which shows his strong belief in national self-determination for his homeland and against Russian rule. Works flowed quickly as by 1902 he had already completed his Second Symphony (both this and his First are in this set). His Valse Triste became very popular and throughout the world and tended temporarily to mask his other achievements, The Third Symphony tended to be overlooked as it was less romantic, more classical in form and was also distinct from the more brooding later symphonies; now it is becoming more performed and appreciated as part of the great canon.

Of the later Symphonies the Fifth is certainly the most popular, the dark gloom of the Fourth (no doubt due to the suspected throat cancer) had been replaced by brightness with melodies that truly sing. The gradual accelerando in the third movement is breathtaking in its excitement ending in a titanic coda where themes from the first and third movements are recalled, the final bars of loud staccato chords are both spell-binding in their originality and brilliant in their effect.

The last work from the set to be composed, Andante Festivo, was written in 1922 for string quartet just before the Sixth Symphony, he later expanded it for string orchestra.