In spite of the undoubted excellence of the recorded sound, I was not unreservedly enthusiastic about the last issue in Gibson's Sibelius cycle with the SNO as the sheer quality of the playing in both the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies (ABRD1074, 7/83) fell short of the distinction one expects on a record costing more than £ 6.00. His new issue strikes me as a good deal more successful on this count. Gibson and the SNO last recorded the Third Symphony way back in the 1960s, coupling it with the Seventh (Alpha SPHA3012, 1/66—nla), but this is, I think, his first recording of the Sixth. Neeme Jarvi's version comes as part of an ambitious series that he is undertaking with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra to record the complete orchestral output of Sibelius for BIS. The project will run to 25 records in all and will include the complete Tempest music and the opera Jungfrun i Tornet (''The maiden in the tower'') of 1897.
There is no doubting Sir Alexander's Sibelian credentials and I listened to his accounts of the Third and Sixth Symphonies with much pleasure and admiration. For I do not forget that he was among the few that championed the Finnish master when it was unfasionable to do so. There are many powerful things here and the SNO are in much better form than they were in the Fourth Symphony, even though the 'cross-hatched' string writing in the slow movement of the Sixth does show their limitations. Yet they play with genuine fire and enthusiasm and the first movement of the Third has a real momentum. His tempo is a good deal brisker now than it was in his earlier recording and I have to say that I rather prefer the steadier pulse that he set in the 1960s to his new account, though he follows the metronome marking of a crotchet = 126 exactly. However, the Allegro marking is modified by the word moderato and there is not quite enough feeling of the latter. Although Sir Alexander and Jarvi do not differ more than fractionally, ther is, I think, more sense of the epic in Jarvi's hands. There is, on the other hand, great excitement in the Gibson and many may respond more positively to the sense of forward movement here. However, the slow movement is another matter and here the much more leisurely tempo adopted by the Estonian conductor strikes me as just right. Sir Alexander, as Anthony Collins before him, loses much of the inwardness and some of the fantasy of this enigmatic movement by pressing ahead too rapidly—and faster than the marking. However, there is much to admire and readers who are collecting the Gibson cycle will find much more to like than to cavil at. I liked both accounts, but at the same time it would be idle to pretend that as performances they displace Sir Colin Davis's coupling of both symphonies on Philips or, in the case of the Sixth Symphony, Karajan and the BPO on DG (now at mid-price), even if the Chandos recording is more vivid and better detailed. The cassette is hardly less impressive than the LP.
Neeme Jarvi's coupling is the incidental music to King Christian II and here, now that Sir Alexander's excellent version has succumbed to deletion (HMV HQS1070, 3/67), he virtually has the field to himself, the only rival being Paavo Berglund and the Bournemouth orchestra (HMV ESD7160, 7/82). Jarvi has much greater poetic feeling and I found this account splendidly committed without the touch of literalness that seems at times to distinguish the Finn. This is very beautifully played and recorded, and has the usual exemplary surfaces. Summing up, Jarvi's account of the Third can hold its own with any in the catalogue and though I would not prefer it to the Boston Symphony and Davis, nor the currently deleted 1974 account from Okko Kamu and the Finnish Radio Orchestra (DG 2535 459, 7/81), there is no doubt it is better recorded.'