Conductor Foster Beyers is the newly appointed Director of Orchestras at Concodia College in Minnesota. He is currently completing his Doctorate degree at the University of Minnesota, where his dissertation is on the recorded history of Sibelius’ Symphony no. 7. He’s also along time Vftp reader and frequent, and valued, commenter. With Sibelius 7 very much on my radar and that of my colleagues in the orchestra over in Guildford, I asked Foster if he could give us a sneak peak into his research and offer his Top 5 essential recordings of this great piece.
Readers are warmly invited to offer your own lists, or perhaps just to pick a record that has special meaning for you. Perhaps there was a live performance you heard that shaped your feelings for the piece?
Your question about the 5 best Sibelius 7 recordings is intriguing. After careful consideration I have compiled the following.(arranged in no particular ranking).
1. Serge Kousseveitsky and the BBC Symphony – This is the first ever recording of the work made in 1933, only 9 years after the premiere. It is astoundingly well played and well recorded as well as being very exciting and dramatic. [Ed. note: this is a seriously great recording which
you can hear on YouTube]2. Osmo Vanska and the Lahti Symphony – This recording is now the standard bearer for Sibelius interpretation. It is probably closest to the score (with a few notable exceptions) and seems to capture the particularly icy way in which the Finns play Sibelius. They will have none of the warm, lush Sibelius style so common in England as typified by Colin Davis.
3. Paavo Berglund and the Helsinki Philharmonic – This often quirky recording seems to capture the epic nature of the work and is the best of his three recordings. The one with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is interesting but ultimately lacks weight while the more recent recording with the London Philharmonic (with alot of comically audible grunts and groans from the maestro) is more quirky and less epic
4. Leif Segerstam and the Danish National Radio Symphony – OK, so Segerstam is Finnish but he does seem to favor a lush, warm string sound. This recording is the most emotional,thrilling, and dramatic (even Wagnerian) recording of the work ever made. He goes for atmosphere and character and the score be damned. I like it.
5. Karajan and the Philharmonia – This is the only recording we know for certain that Sibelius approved. He always said he liked the details to “swim in the sauce” and they certainly do in this very slow and rich performance.
Dishonorable mention: Any recording by Beecham. Although the conductor was personally acquainted with the composer I find his recordings of this particular symphony to be way off base in their extreme speed and lack of sensitivity. It gets a dishonorable mention because I am pretty sure Beecham is the reason Sibelius is quoted as saying conductors don’t know how to conduct a real adagio anymore. This caused him to create a list of metronome markings for all his symphonies, a huge advantage for interpreters today!
You can see Foster’s own take on the piece with him conducting the University of Minnesota Symph over at YouTube here.
Great list from Foster.
A couple of thoughts…
I really love the sound of the Berglund/Chamber Orchestra of Europe recording if taken on its own merits. It’s not that I would only want to hear the piece with so few strings, but I do feel that hearing it this way is informative. My performance last night was with 8 first violins tapering down to 3 basses. It works really well with that size band (same size as the orchestra Sibelius conducted it with), and even then, you can struggle to hear some of the low flute writing.
I have mixed feelings about Ormandy’s recording. He was close to Sibelius and loved him dearly.
https://kennethwoods.net/blog1/2006/11/02/ormandy-on-sibelius/
His 7th is well worth a listen- the Philly strings are wonderful. Sadly, in a moment of madness, he murders the end of the piece by adding a trumpet to the string melody. The result is somewhere between grotesque and hilarious. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ormandy_222_225.ogg
Another conductor whose Sibelius I have a soft spot for is Kurt Sanderling. His take is always quite individual, and, in its way, very faithful to the score. You can get his whole Sibelius cycle from Brilliant for about 14 bucks. His 7th is quite successful, and he gets bonus points for doing Sibelius in Germany when it wasn’t trendy.
Thanks for allowing me to be a guest! I am a fan of all the Berglund recordings but I think the music suffers a little from too much clarity as in the COE recording. Sanderling’s Sibelius is always excellent and I am also a big fan of Petri Sakari and the Iceland Symphony on Naxos. On the whole it is the most tasteful and fulfilling cycle available. He is a hugely underrated conductor of Sibelius and Bruckner. I also should mention Akeo Watanabe, a Japanese conductor whose mother was Finnish. He has a wonderful way of playing Sibelius which is almost weightless. The orchestra sounds intense without ever forcing the sound. His cycle with the Helsinki Philharmonic is very hard to come by in the states. I had a friend from Japan get it for me there.
Congrats on your first Sibelius 7!
Foster
Hi Foster-
Here’s a funny true story about Berglund and the COE recording….
A friend of mine is a violinist in the LPO. When he was coming to do a bunch of Sibelius with them a few years ago, she, like many of her colleagues, tracked down the COE recording so she would have and idea of what to expect from him.
Not long into rehearsals, Berglund begged the LPO to stop playing like the COE. “Please don’t imitate that recording,” he said “it is all too clear and precise. Sibelius should have more mystery and texture” Possibly not his exact wording, but you get the point.
I think there’s room for a chamber orchestra recording that isn’t quite as brightly spotlit as that one. Northern Sinfonia (usually 8-10 first violins) made technically supremely accomplished recordings of he 3rd and 6th, although some of the tempos are very strange. I’d love to do a Sibelius disc with Orchestra of the Swan, and see if we can get the best of both words- the transparency of a small string section, with plenty of haze, depth a mist where called for.
Don’t forget Gibby! Seriously, how did you enjoy Gibby?
Erik. It’s official. I’m a Gibby convert- bought the whole cycle on CD. Other than some slightly disappointing trumpet playing, everything I’ve heard is first rate.
I wonder what readers think of Bernstein’s Sibelius? Maazel’s? Do chime in!
I just happened today to come across the pointer to this post, 5 days after Maazel has passed on, so I will respond to your 3-year-old offer to chime in on Maazel. I am pretty certain that (except for my own amateur band’s performances) the only Sibelius symphonies I have heard live in concert have been under Maazel– 2 and 5 with Cleveland, 2 and 7 with Pittsburgh (I don’t get out much anymore). Also I have his old VPO recording of 5 and 7. I am not familiar with the versions by Gibson, Vanska, Berglund etc. so I cannot compare. Maazel favored a big dark orchestra sound in Sibelius. Interpretively he did his push/pulling of tempos for dramatic effect and this left me a little cold in the 2nd, but in 5 and 7 his versions seemed effective and not over-wrought. In fact I still pull out and play that LP of his VPO 7th probably once a year (must have bought it 40 years ago) and it never fails to move me. But as I recall it was panned by the High Fidelity critic when it came out, so what do I know.
General thoughts on Maazel based on his years in Cleveland– I was not a huge fan, but there were a lot of things he did that were at least interesting and in the right repertoire he was genuinely exciting. His concerts were always worth going to (well almost; I remember one…). Unfortunately I missed his Elektra, which might have been the high point of those years.
“I wonder what readers think of Bernstein’s Sibelius? Maazel’s? Do chime in!”
I haven’t given Maazel’s cycle the attention I’m quite sure it deserves, but I’ve heard Bernstein’s NYPO cycle and found it incredibly disappointing—overly mannered for my liking. For context, I like Davis’s first cycle, with Boston, and love Blomstedt’s with San Francisco, and am very fond of Ashkenazy’s with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
I’ve enjoyed all three of Berglund’s as well —I agree that the COE can be a bit light at times, but I find the clarity invigorating, even if I’d never choose it as my primary cycle. Rozhdestvensky and Sanderling are both are perhaps overly ponderous and even a bit crass, but as variations, they’re a bracing diversion.
Barbirolli’s cycle may have been the first one I feel in love with, but I haven’t heard it in…well, maybe not this century. I should probably rectify that.
I have recordings by Berglund, Bernstein, Ashkenazy, Davis, Barbirolli et al. Barbirolli adds a definite thwack on the last chtord, which I suppose signifies physical death before the spirit soars from B natural to C in the strings. Very dramatic. But, sorry folks, I think the most drop-dead gorgeous account of this account is Ormandy on the Sony re-relaese. What an unbelievably magnificent instrument he had in the Phildelphia Orchestra. Yes, he duplicates, in the trumpets, the strings’ final rise from B to C at the end, but so did Koussevitzky. Ormandy doesn’t need the. trumpets, but I can’t worry about that. I sing through this recording from first to last, and it is unbelievably gorgeous. The final dark string chord on the C chord sustains a riveting experience right up to the end. Yes, Ormandy was capable of kitsch — as when he has the violins in the Waltz of the Flowers shoot up an octave in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and in the hymn with the Mormon Tabernacle in Finlandia. Granted! But, folks, you have to recognize greatness when you hear it. This recording is gripping and gorgeous beyond belief! What a supreme artist the much-condescended-to Ormandy could be, and what an unbelievably great composer was Sibelius!
Thanks for the shout out Ken! A lot has happened since this original post. I am now the Director of Orchestras at James Madison University in Virginia. Since my guest blog post 12 recordings of 7th symphony have been commercially released including some great ones such as the one with the Lahti Symphony and Okko Kamu, Thomas Sondergard with the BBC NOW and of course Simon Rattle’s cycle with Berlin. A real sleeper but a spectacularly Sibelian performance has come to us from Paul Magi and the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra. That one is probably my number one recommendation of the newer recordings. There are now 84 commercially released recordings of the work with the fastest one taking an incredibly zippy 16:13 (Paul van Kempen) and the slowest being Maazel’s Pittsburgh recording at 25:47. A more than 9 minute difference in a work that takes about 21:00 minutes on average! All the best for your upcoming performance!
Kenneth Woods, conductor Hi Foster. Great to hear from you and thanks for a very interesting comment.
In fact, I just did the 7th at Colorado MahlerFest in May and listened to virtually nothing during my prep for that, wanting to just really go back to the score as if it was a premiere. Very interesting and challenging! This time, especially coming so soon after the last performance, I’m going to do as much listening as I can. It will be interesting to see what others have found in the piece and how my hearing of it has changed.
The recent recordings are an interesting bunch. I’ve followed Rattle’s recent performances of the 5, 6 and 7 triptych and even tried to replicate it here (so far without success). Certainly, the Berlin sound works incredibly well in Sibelius, and Rattle’s take on the pieces has grown enormously from his early EMI recordings.
My wife played on all the Sondergard recordings, so I must give those a good listen to see how great the first violins are sounding these days.
The new Lahti was disconcerting and ultimately very disappointing. In the opening and the coda, I feel like there’s no inner rhythm in the long notes, which robs the harmony of a lot of intensity and purpose. It all seems a bit haphazard and guessed at in those passages. I was also pretty amazed to hear the trombones an 8th note behind for the entire passage at letter N. I’m kind of amazed the producer let such an obvious howler slip through. There are lots of wonderful things in it, but he really lost me at the climax, which seemed really half-hearted and uncommitted. I don’t care how Finnish you are, that’s music that needs total engagement and there was so little there.
It was also interesting to go back to Ormandy. The ending is such a catastrophe. The way in which the trumpet jumps from the printed note to the first violins is so thoughtless and awkward. It doesn’t sound like a proper re-touch that Ormandy had thought about carefully in his study, but a spur of the moment bad idea in the session. It would be interesting to track down a live recording and see if he always did it thus. I think doubling the violins is a terrible idea no matter what, but I can think of several ways that such a doubling could have been more artfully handled.
What is really interesting is the way Ormandy holds the tempo absolutely perfectly steady through the whole opening Adagio, staying stubbornly in slow-ish quarters through the whole viola chorale. I’m not sure a non-Philly string section could make it work, but it has a huge cumulative power and intensity, especially compared to the a-rhytmic approximations of the more recent recording. Where Ormandy struggles is in the poco a poco meno moderato, which doesn’t happen at all.
BTW the MahlerFest Sibelius 7 was 19:22, although I wasn’t trying in any way to make it a fast one.
Berglund with the Bournemouth SO?