Sakari

The second installment in Sakari Oramo's superb hybrid SACD cycle of the symphonies of Carl Nielsen on BIS presents the Symphony No. 1 in G minor and the Symphony No. 3, "Sinfonia espansiva," two ruggedly independent works that reflect the composer's late Romantic style yet point to the modernism to come. While the Symphony No. 1 was influenced by Brahms and offers a rich harmonic language, propulsive rhythms, and a fairly homogenous orchestral palette, the Symphony No. 3 is striking for its reliance on unfolding counterpoint and long-breathed lines, and most notable for the use of wordless parts for soprano and baritone voices in the pastoral slow movement. These performances by Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra are exceptional for their stunning power and spacious feeling, though the crisp details and focused sound quality will be the biggest draw for audiophiles.

If you’re only interested in a single disc of Joonas Kokkonen’s music, then let this be the one. It contains three out-and-out masterpieces, stunningly played and recorded with even more vividness and immediacy than on the already superb BIS complete orchestral music edition. Kokkonen’s austere but deeply felt idiom, with its atmospheric tone colors and fleeting lyricism, follows logically on the Sibelius of the Fourth Symphony. This is particularly true of Kokkonen’s Third and Fourth Symphonies, which have much the same feeling of organic growth from just a few simple motives that so often characterizes Sibelius’ work.

Even though Magnus Lindberg's music is densely textured, highly varied, and unpredictable, and as complex, dissonant, and explosive as the wildest avant-garde music, it is often surprisingly pleasant, accessible, and exciting, particularly so in the kaleidoscopic and insanely colorful Clarinet Concerto (2002). This spectacular piece may serve as the best introduction to Lindberg's extremely virtuosic, multilayered music, especially because the focus on a single line instrument clarifies many of Lindberg's procedures and ideas – which can often seem buried in his thicker orchestral works – and highlights them in vivid relief against the elaborate and lush accompaniment.

Conducting this all-Elgar programme is Sakari Oramo, the Finnish conductor who has been all but adopted by English music-lovers and orchestras - for ten years he was music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and since 2013 he holds the post as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

The main work on the present disc is the Second Symphony – a darkly hued, powerful work lasting almost an hour. The composer apparently planned to dedicate it to King Edward VII as ‘a loyal tribute’, but the monarch’s sudden death in May 1910, led to the symphony being inscribed instead to his memory. Composed during the same years as the symphony, the two companion pieces on the disc also have a melancholy tinge: Elegy for strings, and Sospiri (‘sighs’) for strings, harp and organ.

Symphony in F minor represents national romantic phase in Finnish music. The composer accomplished this symphony in the age of 20 and was deceased by tuberculosis at the age of 22. Mielck studies composing in Berlin 1895-94 where he was influenced by Max Bruch. This work is dark in its colours, even pathetic utilizing heavy brass sections and large strings. The Concert Piece for Violin and Orchestra Op. 8 represents more calm and lighter side of the composer. John Storgårds does an exellent job in interpreting this late 19th century symphohy not underevaluating the performance of Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo.

Maurice Ravel composed a number of works which have become classics of the repertoire both for solo piano and for orchestra. On the present disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere ‘colourized’ version. Ravel’s orchestral writing was the result of a long apprenticeship and careful study of orchestration treatises as well as scores, notably of works by Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss. Although his skills as an orchestrator are much admired today, his ability to coax new sounds out of the orchestra wasn't always appreciated in his own time, however – in 1907 the critic Pierre Lalo complained that ‘in Ravel’s orchestra, no instrument retains its natural sound…’

French composer Florent Schmitt, a part of Ravel's Les Apaches group around 1900, has received renewed attention from recording companies, and this release is part of a group of Schmitt discs from Chandos, which has the engineering chops to handle their bulk. The suites from Antoine et Cléopâtre here were part of the music written for a six-hour ballet commissioned by dancer Ida Rubinstein.

Still in his twenties, Pétur Sakari studied in his native Finland and in Paris and made his recording début at the age of 18. On his previous disc for BIS, he performed works by five French composers, receiving international acclaim with top marks in Diapason as well as on the Klassik-Heute website.