There is a danger, with a composer as variable in quality as Sibelius, that a disc of ‘rarities’ will be a trawl through some of the less-inspired rather than less-familiar. (Remember Sir Charles Groves’s collection, ‘The Lighter Sibelius’, 11/76?) It is a pitfall largely avoided by this new Finlandia collection, with the exception of the unidiomatic arrangements (by other hands) of the ‘Berceuse’ and ‘Polonaise’ from the Op. 40 set of piano pieces. The best-known items here are the Mahleresque funeral march In memoriam (1909-10) and the delightful Serenades for violin and orchestra (1912-3) , but for many the main attraction will be the inclusion of the Overture in E and Scene de ballet of 1891, all that Sibelius completed of his first, abortive attempt at a symphony, with the 1902 Overture and Cassazione (‘Cassation’) , whose low opus number belies the actual composition date of 1904.
If the chronological ordering of the pieces (ranging from 1891 to 1917) was intended to illustrate Sibelius’s development as a composer, it is only partially successful, largely due to the later items having little of the power of his best work. It is an aim also not aided overmuch by the adequate performances, which have none of the fire or ardour that Neeme Jarvi and the Gothenburg orchestra brought to this repertoire in their pioneering BIS accounts. The Finlandia sound is also rather flat, and no match for that of the Swedish company.'