It's a pity that the popularity of ''The swan of Tuonela'', and to a lesser extent ''Lemminkainen's return'', has led to the breaking up of the Lemminkainen cycle. Sibelius obviously envisaged it as a dramatic unity: the choice of key centres for the four movements (E flat, A, F sharp, C/E flat) is evidence of his concern to create a discernible overall pattern; moreover, there's a remarkable sense of narrative continuity about the Legends as a whole and in a really good performance one can feel like a spectator in a drama: strikingly vivid pictures of scenes and situations form in the mind, and the central archetypal image—the death and rebirth of the hero—takes on an almost numinous splendour.
That at least was how I felt on rehearing Neeme Jarvi's splendid recording on BIS. I've never felt so strongly gripped by ''Lemminkainen in Tuonela'', or so cinvinced that it's virtually unperformable out of context. Sir Alexander Gibson's performance has its strengths too. The playing of the Scottish National Orchestra is on the whole more polished than that of the Gothenburg Symphony, but it has neither the energy nor the vision of the Jarvi, nor does Gibson show anything like Jarvi's imagination in his realization of the Lemminkainen sound-world. Gibson has his moments of inspiration, but Jarvi's is one single, indivisible inspiration. And the sound of the Chandos issue, though cleaner and more satisfyingly balanced than the BIS, is nowhere near so immediate or so full bodied. A clear recommendation for Jarvi.'