Swane Lake Neeme Järvi

This is the second instalment in our series devoted to Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets. The first recording, of The Sleeping Beauty, was praised upon its release, described by a reviewer in American Record Guide as ‘one of the finest I’ve heard’. Here Neeme Järvi and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra present the complete version of Swan Lake, with the pre-eminent James Ehnes lending his magic to the violin solos. This was Tchaikovsky’s first full-length ballet, but its premiere in 1877, staged at Moscow’s Bolshoy Theatre, was by no means a resounding success. According to most accounts, the choreography was inept, the shabby sets and costumes were borrowed from other productions, and the orchestral playing was poor. Most ballet companies today base their productions on the 1895 revival by the distinguished choreographer Marius Petipa.

This two-disc set marks the beginning of a new project devoted to Tchaikovsky's ballet scores. We start the survey with the complete score of The Sleeping Beauty, recorded on SACD. Swan Lake and The Nutcracker will follow in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Tchaikovsky was approached by the Director of the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, in 1888 about a possible ballet adaptation of Charles Perrault's La Belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty).

For their latest album, Neeme Järvi and his Estonian National Symphony Orchestra present a delightful programme of lesser-known stage music from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Overtures by Thomas, Auber and Boieldieu were all composed for works staged at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and are wonderful examples of the period.

Each instalment in Neeme Järvi’s Mahler cycle for Chandos has something new to say, but it’s hard to tell whether the insights of this First Symphony outweigh the exaggerations. Is there a valid point being made, for instance, about the first movement – mired in its ‘long sleep of winter’ for much longer than usual? Admittedly the awakening, when it finally comes after an emphatic developmental crisis, is massively impressive. The Scherzo’s central dream sequence drifts woozily, exaggerated even by Bernstein standards; the huntsman’s funeral is intriguingly brisk; and the finale lurches between magic and mannerism, capped by an almost ludicrous victory charge.

The output of the Finnish national composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) comprises one of the most fascinating treasure houses of classical music. It includes world favourites such as Valse triste and Finlandia, as well as the most recorded violin concerto of the 20th century. It includes a symphonic cycle that has become one of the most esteemed and popular cycles since Beethoven.

Neeme Järvi’s multi-volume traversal of Richard Strauss with the Scottish National Orchestra was largely successful, and this effort of the early Macbeth symphonic poem and the rare vocal/orchestral song Notturno was a highlight. The Rosenkavalier Waltz sequences are a bit of lightweight filler in contrast to the darker themes of the other works on offer, but as a program is quite interesting.

The first of Dvorak's nine symphonies and the last of his symphonic poems come here in a generous coupling, both of them among the longest works he ever wrote in each genre. The only rival version of the symphony on CD is the Kubelik, and that only comes in the six-disc DG set of the complete cycle. As for The Hero's Song, this is a real rarity. It is in fact the very last orchestral work that Dvorak wrote, in 1897 some seven years before his death. Unlike earlier symphonic poems, it has no specific programme, though the journey from darkness to light in the unspecified hero's life is clearly enough established.

Jarvi directs a characteristically warm and urgent performance of this exuberant inspiration of the 24-year-old composer. It is by far the longest symphony that Dvorak ever wrote, and was longer still in its original form, before the composer revised it. As Ray Minshull put it, when commenting on the Kertesz/LSO issue, which he had produced for Decca, Dvorak ''later learnt to be jubilant more concisely''. The jubilation is what matters, and there is plenty of that on this record yet the issue brings my first significant disappointment in Jarvi's Dvorak series.