Jean Sibelius Recordings

   Sibelius was a late Romantic Composer, a Finnish Nationalist when Finland was being oppressively controlled by Tsarist Russia Politically and culturally when many of their elites felt closer ties with Sweden.  Much of his music evokes the great subarctic Finnish Landscape, and Finnish legends provide a subplot for much of it.

   Influences of Tchaikovsky and Bruckner abound but he had  a distinctive voice which grew more idiosyncratic through his creative lifespan.  He paints on vast Orchestral canvases, with powerful brass, cold and piercing woodwinds and rich shimmering strings.

   His best music will also test your system.  The Finnish Conductor Osmo Vanska had released a set of his music on the audiophile label BIS with a relatively small provincial Finnish Orchestra.  I heard him conduct Tapiola, perhaps Sibelius most evocative score, in Chicago soon after.  Clearly the CSO was several leagues ahead of the Lahti Symphony, but I couldn't believe how big and vast the sonic landscape was, truly evoking the limitless, pitiless Arctic Forests.  I have never been able to get any recording to even begin to approximate that sound on my system.

   Finnish musicians have taken the lead, and continue to do so, but Herbert von Karajan and Colin Davis (particularly in Boston) delivered superb performances as well.  I didn't much care for Leonard Bernstein in Sibelius, but his recording of the Violin Concerto with Francescati is incandescent.  I really dislike the current practice of slowing this work down and milking it.  Francescati and  Bernstein are Hell For Leather in one of the greatest recordings of anything.

   Any recommendations/favorites amongst the Sibelius recordings, both for performance and for sonics?