Sibalius Symphony 2

Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 2 is, by any standards, an outright winner and deserves to be much better known. Here, it’s one of two substantial works flanking a rambunctious account of Danse macabre.

Albéric Magnard really is the great so-far-undiscovered master of French music. Born in 1865 (the same year as Sibelius, Nielsen and Glazunov), the son of the managing editor of Le Figaro, his reticent personality prevented him from courting fame or even performances of his music.
His four-movement symphonies are substantial in length, cyclic in character, serious, attractively scored, slightly melancholic, and well worth getting to know.

This well recorded disc from 1986 offers a typically thoughtful pair of interpretations from Haitink and his orchestra. Those brought up with the emotionally charged Barbirolli disc with the Halle orchestra may well find this to be emotionally anaemic. This is a thoughtful and considered view of this work where the performance is less about London than about being a central European classical symphony of stature. Everything is well controlled, in its place and structured to hit climatic points with precision.