On the face of it, we hardly need another Sibelius cycle. At the same time whether it be Beethoven, Brahms or Mahler, there must always be room for new recordings if they shed new light on great music. In their earlier Sibelius recordings, most notably The Wood Nymph (BIS, 6/96), Everyman (BIS, 5/96) and The Tempest (BIS, 2/93 – nla), Osmo Vanska and his players in the Lahti Symphony Orchestra have shown a total commitment to and identification with Sibelius’s sound world. In the present coupling they come into direct competition with Sir Colin Davis and the LSO (RCA) and Maazel and the Vienna Philharmonic (a three-disc Decca set or Belart) – not to mention, albeit differently coupled, such countrymen as Saraste (RCA and Finlandia), Segerstam (Chandos, 8/91) and Berglund (EMI, 5/96 and Finlandia, 1/97), who has recorded the Fourth Symphony no fewer than four times!
Let me say without further ado that this newcomer belongs only in the most exalted company. The First Symphony is marvellously controlled; the opening movement has that sense of inexorable forward momentum that carries all before it. Yet not in such a way that we do not have time to savour beauty or incident. The second movement has great feeling while eschewing any hint of excessive sentiment. Perhaps Vanska pulls back a little too much at the Meno marking seven bars before fig. M (track 2, 5'56''), though not as much as Bernstein did in his last DG version (4/91), but this is doubtless a matter of personal judgement and taste. The Scherzo is magnificent, very fast and full of excitement. He is even tauter and more manic in his Lemminkainen-like abandon than Sir Colin, and gives us an exhilarating finale. Overall there is nearly five minutes’ difference in playing time between the two readings but both seem exactly right.
The Fourth Symphony receives a most thoughtful and deeply felt performance. In discussing Berglund’s recent account on Finlandia, I wrote that there was a lot to be said for his Sibelius (“plain and unadorned”) but that his players (the Chamber Orchestra of Europe) while “keen and fresh” were “not so deeply immersed in the idiom as are the LSO”. The Lahti orchestra are and it shows: their playing has a concentration and poetic intensity that puts you completely under its spell. It sustains the listener (or at least this listener) through what are very leisurely tempos in the first and third movements: the latter is almost two minutes longer than Sir Colin’s and some will find it too slow. Even I felt that he was pushing things a bit far. (Karajan, whose Philharmonia version enjoyed the composer’s imprimatur, takes 11'53'' in his 1966 DG account to Vanska’s 14'04''.) But there are some particularly beautiful and imaginative touches: the way in which the main theme of the slow movement emerges from the texture (four bars after fig. C, track 7, 5'32''). Earlier in the year I wrote that Sir Colin takes us completely inside the Sibelian landscape and leaves us feeling we inhabit it and have been absorbed into it. The same goes for the Karajan version listed above or for Beecham’s 1937 Sibelius Society set (now on EMI). And to their number I think I would add this newcomer. It is eminently well balanced and truthfully recorded as one would expect from Robert Suff and Ingo Petry. A distinguished addition to the Sibelius discography.'