ALBUM OF THE WEEK
SIBELIUS
Symphonies Nos 5 and 7, En Saga
Hallé, cond Mark Elder
Hallé Live CDHLL7543
Recorded in March 2010 (No 7), March 2014 (No 5) and November 2014 (En Saga), the latest instalment of Elder’s Hallé Sibelius symphony cycle is well worth the wait. The conductor brings a bracing ear to the sounds of nature that famously inspired the composer — in the Fifth Symphony, the arrival of the finale’s depiction of a flight of swans circling above his head rings out triumphantly on the horns — and a sense of momentum that is inexorable. In both symphonies, Elder’s grasp of architecture is consummate, nowhere more so than in the multiple transitions from adagio to vivacissimo, allegro moderato, vivace, presto and back to adagio in the single-movement Seventh. The Hallé’s playing is now superior technically for its long-standing music director than it was for his great predecessor, John Barbirolli, and Elder is no less impressive a Sibelian. The well-filled disc includes the early tone poem En Saga (A Tale), in which Sibelius throws off the influences of his youth and writes an action-packed, if non-specific, story rich in the folklore of Finnish music. HC
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TCHAIKOVSKY
Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden)
Soloists, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir, cond Kristjan Jarvi
Sony 88875176562
Tchaikovsky’s music for Alexander Ostrovsky’s play (1873) predates Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic setting by nine years, and it is enchanting. It shows the 32-year-old composer revelling in the folk idioms of his older contemporaries known as the Mighty Handful, while offering glimpses of works to come: the peasants’ chorus from Yevgeny Onyegin (1878) and even the nightmarish music of The Queen of Spades (1892). Jarvi’s orchestra is lusty, rather than polished, but the singers give fruity solos. HC
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MAHLER
Symphony No 3
Norma Procter (contralto), choirs,
London Symphony Orchestra, cond Jascha Horenstein
Unicorn UKCD2006/7 (2 CDs)
Horenstein’s LSO concerts in the 1960s were key events in the discovery of Mahler in Britain. This 1970 studio recording may not have quite the electricity of their live Mahler 3 — I’ll never forget the almost unbearable excitement of the mighty first movement — and some may like their Mahler wilder. (The fourth-movement oboe call, nature in the raw, is a bit polite.) Still, this is the work of a master conductor, and the LSO responds superbly. DC
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BRITTEN
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings et AL
Soloists, Aldeburgh Strings, cond Markus Däunert
Linn CKD478
These performances by the Aldeburgh-inspired ensemble vividly affirm Britten’s genius. Beginning with Young Apollo, his celebratory extended fanfare for piano and strings (the soloist Lorenzo Soulès), the set proceeds to the haunting viola concertante Lachrymae and the wonderful, concise invention of the Prelude and Fugue for 18-part strings. The Serenade finds a mellifluous, meticulous, impassioned exponent in Allan Clayton. He makes the opening of the (Lyke-Wake) Dirge truly chilling, and his (Keats) Sonnet is ravishingly pure. Richard Watkins’s “natural” horn is splendidly detuned in the framing solos. PD
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BRAHMS, SCHOENBERG
Organ works
Tom Bell
Regent REGCD484
Early in his career, Schoenberg declared the organ obsolete. With his Variations on a Recitative for that instrument, he had a change of heart. The 1941 piece is compelling and densely worked, its tonal leanings cementing Schoenberg’s links with Brahms. The latter’s late 11 Chorale Preludes, together with his Bach-like earlier works, complete Bell’s confident programme. SP
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Reviews by Hugh Canning, David Cairns, Paul Driver and Stephen Pettitt