Jean Sibelius

Complete symphonies set with Barbirolli is worth the price of admission. The Chesky CD of symphony no.2 with Barbirolli at the helm is also rather special.

My Dad swears by BIS for anything Scandinavian - usually well recorded, but very completist so absolutely no idea where to start.

Check out Beecham's recording of "The Tempest" on EMI - Peerless and the Ashkenazy/Philharmonia recordings of the Tone poems on Double Decca.

Generally you can't go wrong with Beecham , that's if you can put up with the mono recordings.

quote:

Originally posted by Huwge:
Complete symphonies set with Barbirolli is worth the price of admission. The Chesky CD of symphony no.2 with Barbirolli at the helm is also rather special.

My Dad swears by BIS for anything Scandinavian - usually well recorded, but very completist so absolutely no idea where to start.

The Essential Sibelius - 15 CD boxed set on Bis for the price of 3 or 4. All good performances and recordings and outstanding VFM. The best recording of the violin concerto is Pekka Kuusisto on Ondine, and the old recording by Dylana Jenson on RCA is a gem. I'm also fond of the Blomstedt recordings of the symphonies with SFSO on Decca. After that, listen to the same band doing the Nielsen symphonies, a Scandinavian not given his deserved recognition.

These two sets come in at under £20 for the pair; I have these on vinyl with Colin Davis conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra (on the Symphonies) - I think it's LSO on some of the other works. To my uneducated ears it sounds superb. One thing I found is the public library has many of these sets and so you can listen to lots of classical and non-classical music without incurring great cost.

Sibelius 2nd Symphony is one of my favourite pieces of music. Of course, I have the Nice/ELP to thank for introducing me to the Karelia suite (and This Week, boring programme, but great theme tune). And what a superb piece of music Finlandia is ....

ATB Rotf

The Symphonies - all good, they seem to become progressively more concise as they go on - I have this set on the basis of reading some internet threads a couple of years ago

and the violin concerto is good too - I have this

Note: I am no classical expert! But with Sibelius most of the symphony cycles are pretty reasonably priced so you may be able to experiment a little

Dean,

The most popular symphonies are 1,2,5 & 7. You can hear a little of the influence of Tchaikovsky in the first two, but Sibelius always manages to avoid the level of mind numbing repetition of phrases that comes through so much of Tchaikovsky. He seems to find his own voice as he gets older. You'll notice that each successive symphony gats more compressed as the movements merge together until, by the time of the seventh, all the movements have merged into one.

I've heard three sets - the Davis one mentioned above (I liked it) the Rattle one (I really didn't like it at all) and the set I now own, Ashkenazy / Philharmonia (I like this also). You can still get the Ashkenazy set from Amazon or a good retailer near you!!!

Sibelius 5 was the first symphony I ever played, so my judgement may be somewhat clouded, but I think it's a belter and if you haven't heard it yet I recommend that this should be your next port of call.

Probably a good idea to buy one of the sets because you'll get some of the tone poems and maybe the violin concerto and these are all worth a listen. Keep a particular eye out for En Saga - I like this a lot.

Happy listening

Kevin

Thanks Guys,

I shall be looking into your suggestions over the coming weeks.



Dean..

Hi
The trouble with sets of the complete symphonies is that they're not necessarily all of equal quality. I find Rattle good in the early symphonies, but less so on 3-7; Ashkenazy is variable (great 4). I found the Colin Davis/Boston set sounded crap on vinyl on many upgrades of my system, but now sounds respectable - probably a safe recommendation, interpretatively. Maazel's was the set I bought as a student and it was very much played, so I am probably blind to any deficiencies.

Don't forget the orchestral non-symphonic works. In particular the Four legends form the Kalevala, aka the Lemminkainen Suite which contains four substantial movements - very much a proto-symphony. And the late Tapiola is a symphony in all but name, a companion work to no 7.

Other personal favourites are Night ride and sunrise (with a glorious horn-led sunrise), The Oceanides (Beecham's recording of this, as with all his Sibelius, is superb), and Pohjola's daughter. There used to be a useful 3CD set from DG conducted by Jarvi of the various orchestral pieces.