SIBELIUS Symphony No 1. En saga (Rouvali)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Jean Sibelius
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Alpha
Magazine Review Date: 03/2019
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 59
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: ALPHA440
![ALPHA440. SIBELIUS Symphony No 1. En saga (Rouvali)](https://reviews.azureedge.net/gramophone/media-thumbnails/sibelius_1_0.jpg)
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 1 |
Jean Sibelius, Composer
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra Jean Sibelius, Composer Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Conductor |
En Saga |
Jean Sibelius, Composer
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra Jean Sibelius, Composer Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Conductor |
Author: Edward Seckerson
Everything about this performance is clearly, startlingly defined. A penetrating ear is held to the score so that things like the approach to the development climax with woodwinds eerily swirling across each page are thrown into such sharp relief as to uncover strange and exciting dimensions to the harmony. Rarely were the bass lines so dramatically delineated. This music comes up through the bass lines. The shift of chords in the final bars of this first movement pre-echo the conclusion of the Seventh Symphony, the dying pizzicato with barely the strength to speak.
The Gothenberg Symphony have rarely sounded more committed, the string-playing possessed of tremendous conviction in the opening pages of the second movement. I also wonder if the Trio of the Scherzo has ever sounded more obliquely mysterious given the robust certainty of what frames it. Then the intrigue of the finale’s opening paragraph and the arrival of that big tune replete with longing. Its return in the wake of the tempest-tossed main Allegro (fizzing with excitement) is as refulgent as it is expansive.
So I doubt there’s a more gripping account of the symphony currently to be found – and it comes in tandem with an equally impressive reading of the 19-minute epic that is En saga. Its folkloric primitivism has therapeutic implications: the composer thought it revealed more of his inner self than anything he had written and Rouvali does indeed project its shifting narrative (its stream of consciousness, if you like) with an almost hallucinogenic vividness. States of mind indeed.
There is also, it should be noted, a satisfying symmetry to the coupling, the disc beginning and ending with an elusively poetic clarinet solo. Urban Claesson take a bow.
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