Swings and roundabouts. This partnership’s earlier account of En Saga for BIS was very fine, but the present DG remake (recorded – can it really be true? – as long ago as December 1992) is both lighter on its toes and sparkier in its recreative responses. Not that the newcomer has things entirely its own way, mind you: the climactic ride perhaps generated more exhilarating thrust and visceral excitement in 1985, while the coda, too, resounded with greater runic slumber. Ultimately, though, neither performance possesses quite the red-blooded fervour, remarkable sweep and daring imaginative scope that made the youthful Mikko Franck’s recent Ondine version such an entrancing voyage of discovery.
Next comes Spring Song, a sweet-toothed essay originally dating from 1894 (and twice revised), whose persistently overthick scoring not even the eloquent Jarvi can redeem. The four Kuolema excerpts (including, yes, the indelible Valse triste) come off very well, above all the haunting ‘Scene with Cranes’, whose other-worldly mood spills over into The Bard (one of the composer’s most characteristic and inspired canvases). However, it’s Tapiola that serves up the most food for thought here. Jarvi’s BIS predecessor with this same band was impressive enough, but his DG interpretation is even more imposing. Indeed, in its uncompromising modernity and frequently revelatory textural clarity (listen to those crisply ‘dancing’ poco p marcato timpani from fig I – and the eerie low-string harmonics a little later on between figs K and L), Jarvi’s trenchant conception put me in mind of the great Hans Rosbaud’s gripping 1957 account with the BPO (high praise, as you will have gathered, and not to be missed on mid-price DG Originals). Perhaps the closing pages are lacking that last ounce of cumulative intensity; otherwise, Jarvi’s is a Tapiola of undoubted stature, if possibly a little too severe for some tastes (try the big-hearted Segerstam on Ondine for a more warmly compassionate view of this music).
Michael Bergek’s engineering has fine presence, solidity and atmosphere, Sibelius’s distinctive bass-drum writing captured with especial subtlety within the wonderfully accommodating acoustic of Gothenburg’s Konserthuset. A praiseworthy collection overall: why on earth has DG been sitting on it for so long?'