Finlandia, The Swan of Tuolena and the Karelia Suite are beautifully played and well paced, but the sagging Valse Triste is devoid of any charm, and Tapiola is a relatively tame performance in comparison to many other versions, chief of which is Hans Rosbaud’s also with the Berlin Philharmonic (they also perform the best Valse Triste in my opinion, one that has melancholy as well as true lilt and character)–but that’s another review. The Second would be a pretty impressive performance too hadn’t it been for the Finale which drags on interminably, and would probably be less of a problem hadn’t it been for Karajan’s seeming inability to maintain the tension throughout the movement.ĭisc 4 is devoted to some tone poems, and overall it is a mixed bag. The other performances also fare very well: the Fourth, while lacking the sheer brutality of Maazel’s performance, impresses with its depth and weight the First, a work Karajan never recorded before this, is similarly competitive, and I find the Sixth, a refreshing and thrilling performance for sure, a true delight. Here, at last, Celibidache’s searingly intense 1992 radio broadcast performance with the Munich Philharmonic meets its less drawn-out yet similarly momentous brother. Check out the broadening coda of the Finale: through the pealing trumpets and the blaring trombones, the usually grandiose and dignified passage is instantly transformed into a gigantic, almost overwhelming wall of sound. Gone is the homogeneous, glossy blend of the DG performance here, the plush, string-heavy sound is replaced by a predominantly brassy canvas (to the extent that the strings nearly get swamped at times), resulting in a much rougher sound. The best performance in this set is that of the Fifth, a truly exciting and intense performance that holds the listener’s attention from the first bar to the last. Compared to his earlier recordings, be it with the Philharmonia for EMI in the 1950s, or the late 1960s/early 1970s for DG, this set arguably represents Karajan’s Sibelius interpretation at its tried-and-true best. Though Karajan's Sibelius was greatly admired in its time, these performances now seem very mannered and over-moulded, the textures too smooth and dense, the gestures too forced even the account of Tapiola seems less elemental than it does on Karajan's more famous recording for Deutsche Grammophon.The recordings featured here are Karajan’s last Sibelius recordings, recorded from 1976 to 1981.
This selection of Sibelius symphonies – together with a disc of tone poems, including En Saga and Tapiola, from the late 1970s and early 80s – almost exactly replicates performances with the Philharmonia collected in the box Orchestral Spectaculars from Handel to Bartók 1949-1960. Karajan was never reluctant to return to works he had recorded before, and there is inevitably some duplication among these sets. Thirteen sets are planned – 100 discs in all – including performances with the Philharmonia, La Scala Milan and the Vienna Philharmonic as well as the Berlin Philharmonic, ranging between 19.
KARAJAN SIBELIUS 5 ARCHIVE
T his year is the 25th anniversary of the death of Herbert von Karajan, and Warner Classics is taking it as an opportunity to remaster and repackage the best of its extensive archive of the recordings he made for EMI.
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