Sibelius' Third Symphony

[Kuhlau]

It's horrible when you start a topic and it then gets threatened with derailment by a completely irrelevant discussion. So, to preserve the integrity of the recent Lorin Maazel thread, I'm starting this one in the hope of some lively debate about the relative merits of various recordings of Sibelius' wonderful Third Symphony.

This evening, I've surveyed several recordings. Here, in massively condensed form, are my thoughts:


Bernstein/New York Philharmonic Orchestra (Sony) - Far too fast and somewhat 'routine', though nicely captured

Blomstedt/San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (Decca) - Impressively recorded, with arguably the best central movement I've yet heard

Davis/London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live) - Not without many merits, but failed to convince me entirely

Rattle/City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (EMI) - Intriguingly detailed and quite compelling in places, though not completely satisfying

Sakari/Iceland Symphony Orchestra (Naxos) - To my great surprise, a near-ideal performance (IMO), marred only by being recorded too closely in some parts of the delicate central movement

Sanderling/Berlin Symphony Orchestra (Edel/Brilliant Classics) - Vivid and rich with good tempi choices throughout and a central movement that goes as fast as Bernstein's but coheres better (IMO)

Vanska/Lahti Symphony Orchestra (BIS) - Committed, passionate, but way too slow for my tastes in the middle movement (though I understand this is apparently how Sibelius wanted it to be played)


Are there any other versions members would recommend I hear before declaring (again, to my surprise) Sakari my top choice for this fine work?

FK

[Heck148]

Bernstein/NYPO is may favorite. he does each mvt well. I love how he does the middle mvt - this loving rolling tune needs lots of "air" - it has wonderfully placed "silences".The NYPO WWS - flutes esp, sound great...the bass line is very imaginative,and Bernstein highlights this....lots of rhythmic variation.

this mvt [II] makes very effective use of 6/4 time - sometimes the bass line is in 3 beats/bar[3/2 ~ 1+ 2+ 3+], sometimes 2 [1+a 2+a], same with the melody - it fits in 3 or 2, tho it needs to be mostly in 2, IMO, to have that lovely rolling, flowing momentum. in 3 it is much too square, rigid and choppy.

Lenny esp nails the finale, with the quasi-chorale tune being very well delivered first in the strings, then full orchestra brass - horns... notice how distinctly and clearly he gets those cadence licks [anticipations] in there - cello, then trombone II.

Maazel/VPO is very good also - the first mvt esp. h eloses a little srema as he fgoes along, the finale does not come off as well as Bernstein's, but it's still a good recording. the VPO sounds very fine and the recording is well detailed..

[John F]

This symphony seems to have been a favorite of Colin Davis. Not only did he conduct it often, but it's the piece he chose for a session with the Juilliard student orchestra. Overhearing what he was saying to the players, I was surprised that he didn't stick to technicalities but suggested a dramatic situation for the first movement development to get a particular quality in the playing. The LSO Live recording is pretty close to the highly communicative performance he and that orchestra gave in New York at about that time, but maybe not quite as edge-of-the-seat.

I also like the oldest recording of all, by Sibelius's friend and preferred interpreter the conductor and composer Robert Kajanus with the London Symphony, made for HMV's Sibelius Society albums. Amazon.com lists a CD transfer on the Finlandia label in a 3 disk set also including Kajanus's recordings of the 1st and 2nd symphonies and Pohjola's Daughter.

[moldyoldie]

This symphony seems to have been a favorite of Colin Davis.

Of all the recordings of No. 3 I've heard, Sir Colin does seem to delve deeper into the score than most. The problem for me is that I'm not always convinced there's much to be found in those depths. Vänskä is much the same. I can certainly enjoy listening to the insights of both, but wouldn't recommend them to a novice lay listener.

As I stated on that other thread, I find the Bernstein/NYPO to be a most well-balanced and entertaining take on this often over-scrutinized score. Järvi/Gothenburg/BIS is also a good one for a first exposure; it was for me.

FWIW, I've come to appreciate a slower Andantino middle movement as opposed to faster, but as long as it sounds "organic" to the whole conception of the symphony, I can certainly live with any. The tune does carry the day in most cases.

[moldyoldie]

To whomever is interested, my extended comments on the Sibelius No. 3 from Segerstam/HPO/Ondine is on the "What Are YOU Listening To Today?" thread, somewhere on this linked page. In short, I really like it! You might like it also, Kuhlau - the Andantino is much slower than Bernstein, but much faster than Vänskä -- about 10¼ minutes.

I've heard one recording of the Third that was well-nigh egregiously fast, that of Olli Mustonen -- GAWD!

[Kuhlau]

You might like it also, Kuhlau - the Andantino is much slower than Bernstein, but much faster than Vänskä -- about 10¼ minutes.

That sounds like it might be about ideal, sir. Thanks for the tip-off.

FK

[Harold Tucker]

My long-time favorite recording of this was the one by Okko Kamu and the Helsinki Philharmonic on DG. Currently this is available as part of a bargain box set.. I am also fond of Sir John Barbirolli's
EMI recording. Also,based on hearing live performance earlier this year, Paavo Jarvi ought to be given a shot at recording it. Too bad Tel Arc is stuck in such a rut.

[Donaldopato]

I am not usually a big fan of Segerstam, but his 3rd coupled with an excellent 5th on Ondine mentioned above, is one of my favorites. Davis' LSO 3rd is one of his best in that series. I also enjoy Davis' 3d from the old Boston set.

[val]

I like Bernstein's version with the NYP.

I also like Kletzki, with the Philharmonia, more classic and concerned with the archtecture of the work, and Rojdestvensky, perhaps the most poetic of the three.

Berglund with Helsinki would also be a very decent choice.

[Kuhlau]

Glad someone's mentioned Berglund. Didn't he record this work twice as part of two complete cycles?

FK

[val]

Yes he did, with the Bournemouth Orchestra.

What I most admire in Berglund is his perfect sense of the architecture of this music. His versions are always good and sometimes (the 4th, the 7th Symphonies) excepcional.

[Kuhlau]

Yes he did, with the Bournemouth Orchestra.

What I most admire in Berglund is his perfect sense of the architecture of this music. His versions are always good and sometimes (the 4th, the 7th Symphonies) excepcional.

Isn't there also another set with ... I want to say the European Chamber Orchestra, though I'm not sure that's right.

FK

[moldyoldie]

Isn't there also another set with ... I want to say the European Chamber Orchestra, though I'm not sure that's right.

FK

Yes, it's OOP with used copies I've seen fetching out-sized prices. I've heard only the Fourth and Sixth from the ECO cycle and was thoroughly (and surprisingly) nonplussed -- the most leaden and uninvolving performances of these fine symphonies I've yet heard.

[Heck148]

Maazel's VPO recording of Sibelius #3 is very good. it was my first exposure to the work...esp good in the first mvt. I don't think he matches Bernstein/NYPo overall, but it still is a very good rendition...

[Kuhlau]

I've heard only the Fourth and Sixth from the ECO cycle and was thoroughly (and surprisingly) nonplussed -- the most leaden and uninvolving performances of these fine symphonies I've yet heard.

Odd. I've heard folks heaping praise on this set. Guess it just goes to show we're all different, huh?

FK

[Fergus]

I have just read this discussion so I decided to give it a spin again as it is a relatively short symphony.



To be honest I do not have any other versions of the Sibelius 3rd for reference but I have this one for some time and never feel the need to find an alternative. I think that it shows great power and passion in the two outer movements while the central movement (one of my favourite movements) is played very tenderly. There is a wonderful conclusion to the piece also.

[TopoGigio]

The old Kajanus, now at Koch...

This is Kajanus, not Karajan. I say this not to labour the obvious but to try to give record-collectors a reasonable idea of what to expect and what not to expect. Kajanus was a professor of music, not a professional conductor. Chording is often more than a little ragged in a way his near-namesake would never have stood for. However when it comes to their respective versions of the wonderful fifth symphony there is no doubt in my mind which I would sooner own if it came down to one. As it happens, I own both, and I know which is the one I listen to. As well as his legendary professionalism and technical proficiency, Karajan has the advantage of modern recording, although Kajanus is not badly at all recorded for the 1930's. When it comes to insight and vision, Karajan simply drops out of mine as far as this work is concerned. For me neither he nor anyone else comes within a mile of Kajanus.
The fifth gave Sibelius more trouble than anything else he composed. At its first performance it was in four distinct movements. Sibelius was dissatisfied and withdrew the work, reissuing it with the familiar bridge section between the opening Molto Moderato and the waltz-like 3/4 section. This, it appears, was the bit that had given him most of the heartache, and for me it is one of the most wonderful sequences he ever conceived. I never knew how wonderful it was until I heard it from Kajanus, like low clouds scudding across a rainy sky. Kajanus was a friend (most of the time) of the composer, but that alone could not have given him the insight and unique grasp that he shows here so spectacularly. Together with the way he does the concluding sequence of Tapiola, this piece of interpretation puts Kajanus in a league entirely of his own as an interpreter of Sibelius, come Beecham come whoever.

This is only a particular high spot. The whole piece is wonderfully realised, and so is his version of #3. This seems to me a piece in which the truly mature and individual Sibelius style is, so to speak, struggling out of its cocoon. The last movement already anticipates the great last movement of #5, particularly in respect of the theme that Tovey so memorably likened to Thor swinging his hammer. Perhaps the middle movement is the best, and all my life I have been particularly fond of the Collins version with its very mouvemente tempo. Kajanus is slower, the characteristic ambiguity of rhythm as between twice three and thrice two is very strongly pointed up, and once again the peculiar sense of near-prophetic insight is with me strongly as I listen to his account.

If I can't give the disc 5 stars that is because of the recorded quality and nothing whatsoever to do with ragged chording or anything of the sort. I am a music-lover not a perfectionist. Whatever there is to admire in Karajan in the fifth (a great deal), or in Collins in the third (a great deal more), there is nobody quite like Kajanus.

[smitty1931]

In the early 50s, Sixten Ehrling had a MERCURY RECORDING of the Sibelius 3rd and 6th symphony.It was the finest version I had ever heard and is remembered fondly. When I played it I felt I was walking through Sibelius' beloved forests with him. Ehrling actually knew him. I do not think this recording was ever reissued on CD.

[karlhenning]

The Third Symphony, dedicated to [Granville] Bantock, was completed on his return and given its première in Helsinki before September [1907] was out, alongside Pohjola’s Daughter and the suite from Belshazzar’s Feast. The last two were received more enthusiastically by the audience than the austere, pared-down textures of the symphony, with its oddly elusive atmosphere, restrained mid-nineteenth-century orchestration and telescoped scherzo-and-finale. [Karl] Flodin, though, was delighted, calling the composer ‘a Classical master’ and the music ‘revolutionary, new and truly Sibelian’. Flodin was right — the Third Symphony was indeed a quietly radical work, where all the most extraordinary activity occurred below the surface, unlike in the Second with its grander, romantic mien. Harold Truscott believed it to be the first Sibelius symphony to evince ‘complete mastery’ and was ‘the key to all that followed it’, while others like Julian Herbage have commented on its innovative key-scheme, harmonic side-slips and the individuality of the finale. In many ways Symphony № 3 accorded with Busoni’s ideal of ‘Young Classicality’, a return to the musical spirit of the past and not to be confused with the mannered neo-classicism that became the rage amongst composers of the post-World War I years. As such, the Third — the first of the truly great Sibelius symphonies — has been generally misunderstood and did not succeed with audiences or the bulk of critics to anything like the degree of the First or Second. So complete was the incomprehension that greeted the work that its lack of success was at least partially attributed by many to the composer’s use of folk elements, whereas in fact this was intentionally the most cosmopolitan and international score Sibelius had yet attempted to compose.

Jean Sibelius, (Phaidon, 1997), pp.91-92

Cheers,
~Karl

[Kuhlau]

... while the central movement (one of my favourite movements) is played very tenderly.

I've always felt that to be true of this recording, certainly.

FK

[pizza]

There is an excellent recording of the 3rd Symphony played by Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducting the Finnish Radio SO on a Finlandia CD. My 2 CD copy also has the finest performance of the Kullervo Symphony I've ever heard, as well as fine performances of Symphonies 6 and 7.

[stenka razin]

Interesting footnote for this splendid thread. The great Herbert von Karajan recorded all of the other six Symphonies splendidly in most cases for EMI and DG. Yet, he could not make out the difficulties in this great but underrappreciated masterpiece. Karajan, sadly never recorded this piece. In fact, in my research I could not even find any performance from the great maestro.

[Fergus]

Interesting footnote for this splendid thread. The great Herbert von Karajan recorded all of the other six Symphonies splendidly in most cases for EMI and DG. Yet, he could not make out the difficulties in this great but underrappreciated masterpiece. Karajan, sadly never recorded this piece. In fact, in my research I could not even find any performance from the great maestro.

That is very interesting. Omitting something like that from a cycle seems such a deliberate act. I wonder what the problem was.

[AntonioA]

smitty1931

I have some old LP:s of Sixten Ehrling conducting Sibelius (Mercury and Capitol and HMV) I know his Mercury Series are on CD using LP copies since the original master tapes are lost or damaged.

My favorite Sibelius third is Anthony Collins on Decca/London and the old Kajanus