From early in his career, Sir John Barbirolli was a doughty Sibelian. As Michael Kennedy relates in his highly informative introductory essay, Barbirolli championed five of the seven symphonies during his stints with both the Scottish Orchestra and New York Philharmonic (his 1940 recording for American Columbia of the Second Symphony with the latter band has since been reissued on Dutton Essential Archive, 8/99). During the 1944-45 season with the Halle, he programmed the complete cycle in chronological order, and the same team left an abiding impression in Helsinki with the Second and Fifth Symphonies. It was the Sixth that featured in Sir John’s last-ever Manchester concert in May 1970. Within less than a fortnight, he had committed his interpretation to tape, thereby completing the Sibelius symphony cycle with the Halle he had begun for EMI in July 1966. Just over two months later, he was dead.
With the exception of The Swan of Tuonela (which shared a disc with the Second Symphony – on which more later), the contents of the first disc will be familiar to many collectors from a famous LP compilation (and EMI’s exemplary packaging nostalgically reproduces the wonderful picture of Stac Polly in the north-west Highlands that adorned the original ASD sleeve). I have known and loved the spontaneous, honest-to-goodness accounts of Finlandia, Valse triste, Lemminkainen’s Return and the Karelia Suite for many years now, but I’d forgotten just what a compelling beast Barbirolli’s 1966 remake of Pohjola’s Daughter actually is – a daringly spacious yet marvellously intense rendering. We also get four numbers from Pelleas and Melisande (less delicately evanescent than Beecham’s – 7/90, nla – and featuring an exceptionally imposing ‘At the Castle Gate’), three of the Scenes historiques (including an irresistibly dramatic ‘Scena’ from the Op 25 Suite), and sturdy, deeply felt realisations of Rakastava and the Romance in C. Granted, the Halle strings are far from immaculate, but fair compensation is provided by the tender vulnerability of Barbirolli’s pliant direction.
So on to the symphonies, and I began my listening with the Second. This was the last of JB’s four recordings of a work that meant a very great deal to him – and an incident-packed, unashamedly heart-on-sleeve journey it proves to be, with craggy grandeur allied to expressive flexibility. However, not every gesture convinces, and the orchestral playing, though enormously heartfelt, has some decidedly shaky moments as well. All of this would have mattered less had Barbirolli’s red-blooded interpretation generated a more powerful symphonic current – and here is where I must declare a strong preference for Barbirolli’s 1962 version with the RPO (originally made for Reader’s Digest, and now available on Chesky). It’s still one of the all-time great Sibelius Seconds, thrillingly combustible without any loss of grip.
The First Symphony brings another extraordinarily characterful, temperament-laden display, these performers audibly revelling in the music’s full-throated rhetoric. However, the first two movements have perhaps acquired a bit of a paunch since this team’s December 1957 Pye recording (last available on EMI Phoenixa, coupled with the Fifth, set down in May that same year). It’s a big bear-hug of a performance, which some Sibelians may well find just a little too over-wrought. In the Fifth, however, my allegiances are reversed in favour of this 1966 remake. There’s a strong sense of expectancy and nascent growth at the outset, and numerous observant details excite the imagination (you can, for once, really hear those chuntering violins on the G string from four before fig Q in the first- movement coda). However, much as I warm to the homely charm of the central Andante mosso, quasi allegretto, the finale is perhaps wanting something in tingling concentration and genuine nobility of utterance. That’s a criticism I’d also level at the Seventh, which, though conscientious and at times positively cherishable, is also simply too unkempt and excitable for its own good, lacking in the requisite, seamless organic power.
The opening Allegro moderato of the Third sets out in intriguingly truculent fashion but becomes fatally becalmed in the development (where you will encounter some queasily undernourished viola tone). There’s some affecting wind playing in the dusky slow movement, and the defiant tone returns to far more convincing effect in the finale, but the overall impression is, frankly, altogether too rough-and-ready for comfort. Fallible orchestral technique also rather takes the shine off Barbirolli’s Sixth – a pity, for his view is distinctive in its gently bucolic, playful rapture, the overriding mood one of blithe, almost other-worldly innocence. As for the Fourth, well, those seeking symphonic logic should steer well clear (and the finale contains one or two departures from the printed score), yet there’s a bloody-minded determination about the slow movement in particular that makes for oddly moving listening, warts and all.
Remasterings are vivid, but the 1966 Kingsway Hall productions of Symphonies Nos 1, 2, 5 and 7 incline to a certain multi-miked fierceness in the treble, lacking the richness and glow of EMI’s finest efforts in this much-missed venue. To sum up, then, a set, I would suggest, primarily of interest to this inimitable conductor’s most fervent admirers.'