Sibelius Storgårds

With this 2014 Chandos box set of the symphonies of Jean Sibelius, John Storgårds joins the relatively small company of modern conductors who have recorded the full cycle, and his set as a whole is persuasive, despite some unusual choices. As a Finnish conductor with a strong incentive to interpret these works faithfully, Storgårds is quite true to Sibelius' intentions, even though the sound of the BBC Philharmonic is not as lush or as homogenous as might be expected.

Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius, alongside Grieg the two giants in Nordic classical music, were both born in 1865. Both also received their first musical training on the violin, earning valuable insights when it came to writing for the instrument. Their respective violin concertos were composed some six years apart – Sibelius’ in 1904-05 and Nielsen’s in 1911 – and belong to the most performed works of either composer. They are nevertheless as different from each other as are the artistic temperaments of their makers. While retaining the traditional three-movement concerto form, Sibelius composed something closer to a Late-Romantic orchestral tone poem giving the orchestra unusual prominence. Nielsen on the other hand opted for an unconventional form, reminiscent of the Baroque concerto grosso: the spiky, neoclassical work is nominally in two movements, but with each movement having a slow and a fast section.

John Storgårds is a Finnish conductor and violin virtuoso, known for his strong interest in playing and promoting contemporary music. After studying violin with Esther Raitio and Jouko Ignatius at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, he went to Israel to study with Chaim Taub. While performing as an orchestra musician, Storgårds frequently led as concert master, and he developed an interest in conducting, particularly after receiving an offer to conduct the Helsinki University Symphony Orchestra.

Per Nørgård has been hailed as the leading Danish contemporary composer and has often been described as eclectic. With this recording, the reasons for that will likely be evident both to listeners who are familiar with this celebrated composer and those who are new to his stylings. Nørgård has written in many genres – chamber music, concertos, operas, and orchestral music, including eight symphonies – and has drawn inspiration from a myriad of sources, such as the symphonies of Sibelius and Vagn Holmboe, jazz, artist Adolf Wölfli, and serialism, even taking the latter to a new level with his "infinity row," which, in turn, inspired numerous composers that followed.

To say the least, Kalevi Aho's Twelfth Symphony is unique in musical history. Like Wagner's Parsifal, it was written to be performed in a specific acoustic environment. But while Parsifal was composed for Wagner's six-year-old Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Aho's Twelfth was composed for Finland's million-year-old Luosto Mountain in Lapland, hence the sobriquet Luosto Symphony. Commissioned by Soldankylä, the city at the base of the mountain, Aho wrote his Twelfth after carefully exploring the mountain slopes' acoustical properties and many of his artistic decisions were dictated by his findings. Given that vast stage, for example, the work would contain no fast sections requiring precision ensemble playing. And because it would be played outside, the possibility of an audible wind had to be taken into account.

Frank Peter Zimmermann offers a fresh and exciting view of the Violin Concerto, less sentimental than some, with swift tempos and a dazzlingly swift finale. He phrasing is sometimes a touch angular, particularly in the first movement, and this usually works well, putting an arresting slant on tunes we feel we've heard a million times before. Only the very opening misfires a bit: yes, it's marked mezzo-forte, but it's also marked "dolce ed espressivo", and Zimmermann's somewhat wiry tone is neither.