A great lover of Sibelius achieves something rare
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 12/09/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Colin Davis manages to be a very young 80 years old, and here in a riveting Sibelius First he's definitely got all the energy one could ask for. From the beeautifully played clarinet solo onwards, vibrant execution keeps pace with the conductor's imagination -- quite a thing considering how easily you could take Sibelius's romatnic first effort for granted, pushing out the usual generic gestures. But as the waves crash over you in the oceanic climaxes of the opening movement, it's as if something vital is at stake. Davis alters our expectations just enough in every movement to make the reading feel special bar by bar. The slow movement lulls and haunts at the same time. The Scherzo is alert and vigorous without being hectic. The rhapsodic finale feels fervent yet not feverish. In all, an outstanding performance, my choice among the three Davis has given us since his Boston cycle for Philips in the Seventies.
But it was the Fourth, a deeply enigmatic work, that I was most looking forward to. Davis is capable, at his best, of making this music sound naturally coherent instead of disjointed and puzzling. The first chord, which Karajan delivers as a desperate plunge into the netherworld, is calm in Davis's hands, and the following cello solo maintains the mood of searching and seeking, as if we were entering a shadowy Finnish forest to explore its mystery. Davis stakes everything on his ability to build the music effortlessly -- this is a performance with less dramatic contrast than alamost any other.
The risk wouldn't have paid off unless the conductor had enormous assurance in his ability to hold short, harmonically ambiguous phrases together -- and Davis does. As a result, you feel mesmerized, unable to take your ear away (a feeling I usually associate with deliberately hypnotic conductors like Karajan and Stokowski). The voicing of chords is impeccable; this is literally a "tone" poem, relying on slowly shifting color and mod rather than melody and conventional development. Even the Scherzo, the symphony's only conventinal movement, isn't played for overt excitement, in order to keep the spell going. Ultimately, I think Sibelius's intention was mystical -- he wants us to feel his profound reverence for Nature without painting literal scenic pictures. If that's so, Davis achieves a reading that desrves to be called mystical as well.
Ther's more than one way to make Sibelius sound "right," but in this CD Davis has done it the hardest way one can imagine, by communicating the soul of the music without tricks and showmanship."
![Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 [Hybrid SACD]](https://nationalbookswap.com/cd//l/36/2636/6182636.jpg)