A glance at the current Gramophone Compact Disc Guide and Catalogue will show that the Sibelius symphonies are already well served in the new format but these new DG transfers are astonishingly fine, and can really hold their own with all comers. The Fifth Symphony faces the greatest competition (and formidable it is too) from Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia Orchestra on Decca, not to mention the even finer account Simon Rattle has made with the same orchestra for EMI. Both versions have the advantage of the latest engineering: yet the excellence of this classic Karajan record is such that few listeners would guess its age. The Karajan is (to quote IM who reviewed its last reissue on cassette) ''a great performance'' and, to my mind, it is indisputably the finest of the four LP versions he has made (two with the Philharmonia for Columbia and the 1977 Berlin account for HMV). Impressive though it is, I have never thought Karajan's Seventh quite in the same class, and it must yield both technically and, I think, artistically to the Ashkenazy which is very powerful and coupled with impressive Tapiola. However, the virtues of the Fifth are well known and I cannot welcome its appearance in the CD format too warmly.
The Ashkenzay/Philharmonia account of the Fourth Symphony has spectacular range and impact but the nearly 20-year-old Karajan recording is only marginally less powerful and the performance is of real stature. It has grown in my estimation over the years and I find that having felt it too well-groomed on first acquaintance in the mid-1960s, I have come to discover its depths in later years. Although one is bowled over by the Ashkenazy at first, it is the Karajan that has the greater concentration and tension. Of course, couplings are relevant: the Ashkenazy on Decca offers Finlandia and Luonnotar, with Elisabeth Soderstrom (having more vibrato than is ideally desirable), while the DG offers Karajan's glorious account of the Sixth Symphony, which to my mind remains almost unsurpassed. Among its predecessors only the famous Beecham recording on LP (RCA—nla) offers more distinctive insights—and I endorse a recent plea in these columns for its reissue (see April Correspondence, page 1172), and of more recent versions Sir Colin Davis's LP account on Philips with the Boston orchestra is extremely fine. (A concert performance I heard at the Royal Festival Hall last summer from Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia promises well.) However, so far as a CD is concerned, at the time of writing the only contender of note is Neeme Jarvi and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra who give a vividly-recorded account with totally committed playing on BIS/Conifer. In its CD format this is coupled with Pelleas et Melisande. Although Karajan's recording does not quite have the range of the Jarvi version, the situation is now much improved and the performance is a great one: so are Nos. 4 and 5.'