Minnesota Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä MAHLER 1

The shimmering string harmonics at the opening of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony bring to mind the suspended breath of spring, and will have signalled even to the very first audiences that a new symphonic era was being ushered in. Soon enough the composer introduces some of the elements that would become key components of his musical language: sounds of nature (here cuckoo calls) are combined with quasi-militaristic fanfares and ‘high-art’ chromatic wanderings in cellos, as if to illustrate Mahler’s view of the symphony as an all-embracing art form. The symphony, which the composer originally gave the subtitle ‘Titan’, borrows extensively from the song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. But Mahler also incorporates elements of Moravian popular music (in the second movement) and – in the slow third movement – famously quotes a minor-mode version of the children’s rhyme Bruder Martin (also known as Frere Jacques). The finale transports the listener to a world of Gothic theatricality reminiscent of Grand Opera, before arriving – after a number of false starts – at the symphony’s heroic chorale-like ending.

Martin Fröst / Lahti Symphony Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä NIELSEN & AHO Clarinet Concertos

Fearsomely talented Swedish clarinetist Martin Fröst continues his conquest of the major concerto repertoire for his instrument with this recording of Carl Nielsen's 1928 Clarinet Concerto, paired with a new concerto by Finland's Kalevi Aho. The Nielsen concerto is a dense work in which the clarinet and the orchestra spend a lot of time going their separate ways, with the path of the clarinet being very twisted indeed. Difficult arabesques on the clarinet are interrupted without warning by heraldic blasts from the orchestral horns. The concerto was greeted by early reviewers as a radical modern work, and an instrumentalist wanting to push the clarinet into uncomfortable territory can still make it sound that way. Fröst, however, places the concerto into a sphere that includes many of Nielsen's other well-known works: for him it is not so much a radical work as one that has the characteristic Nielsen combination of being both a bit conservative and quite intellectually challenging. As the clarinet seems to fall into disputes with individual members of the orchestra, Fröst is implacable rather than furious, and he has the technical chops to make this approach work. The Aho concerto is a lyrical piece that makes a good companion for the thornier Nielsen. It offers plenty of chances for cantabile display, not only on the part of Fröst but also for Finland's Lahti Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä, whose high string tones have an impressive precision and smoothness. The Super Audio sound from Sweden's BIS label is well-nigh flawless, and this is an original and immensely satisfying recording that both asserts the continuing relevance of classic repertoire and adds vital new music to the literature. (James Manheim)

Yevgeny Sudbin / Minnesota Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto 3 - MOZART Piano Concerto 24

“It’s weird”, I thought, before listening to this album, “Mozart’s Concerto No. 24 and Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 are very similar, but you rarely see them together on an album.” Then I listened and realized why: they are, in fact, so similar that playing them back-to-back creates a risk of burnout, even in performances as good as these.

They’re both in C minor. Their opening themes sound a little alike. They both trade in grand heroism, with plush slow movements and turbulent finales. Listening to them together, you get the very strong impression that Beethoven was keeping close to his source.

Yevgeny Sudbin helps this along by turning up the dial a little bit in the Mozart, and dialing a little back in the Beethoven. The cadenzas, which he wrote himself, provide the standout moments: the first Mozart cadenza is overtly Beethovenian, including, at 12:40, a deliberate quote of the opening melody from Beethoven’s third concerto. The Mozart finale’s cadenza includes a short (abortive?) fugue of Sudbin’s own devising, which is surprising and a little harsh, while the first-movement cadenza in the Beethoven concerto contains the most breathtaking playing on the whole CD.

The Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä are perfect, almost too much so, reminding me of my criticism of these forces’ symphony cycle: that it sounds like Beethoven played by well-engineered robots. That cycle had many fans who will love this. I can say, though, that the woodwinds - particularly clarinets - make beautiful sounds in the Mozart larghetto, full of Viennese elegance.

Some critics have noted that Sudbin makes the simplest passages (runs, trills) into the greatest pleasures. This is true. His playing is so precisely voiced, and so crystal-clear, that it’s hard not to be enthralled by passages which, to other pianists, are the busy work. This alone would make the recording a standout. The cadenzas add interest, and most of you will probably like the coupling and orchestra more than I did. Recommended in the expectation that time will increase my appreciation for the musicianship here. (Brian Reinhart)

Yevgeny Sudbin / Minnesota Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos 4 & 5

With this release Yevgeny Sudbin and Osmo Vänskä launch their Beethoven concerto cycle in a novel and intriguing fashion. Going in at the deep end with the most lyrical and magisterial of the concertos, Sudbin makes it clear that he has little use for Beethoven weighed down, as it were, with excess baggage, with the heft and earnestness of a more conventional view. Instead, his delectably light-fingered brilliance and virtuosity shines a new light on some of the most familiar scores in the repertoire, making a supposed division between Mozart’s Apollonian and Beethoven’s Dionysian genius seem little more than a cliché.

True, listeners used to a greater intensity and expansiveness may balk at the nervy rapidity of Sudbin’s reflexes, recalling the greater ease and breadth of past masters of the Beethoven concertos such as Gilels or Arrau, or the more speculative or interior stance of, say, Radu Lupu. But if Sudbin occasionally suggests “time’s winged chariot hurrying near”, the mother-of-pearl sheen of his pianism is backed by a special underlying sensitivity. In the grandest of Beethoven’s two cadenzas for the Fourth Concerto, Sudbin’s spine-tingling pace takes him close to the edge; but hearing him in the phantom entry to the Emperor Concerto’s finale reminds you that you are listening to a wholly individual artist. Such mercurial pianism keeps Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra on their toes but they follow their soloist as to the manner born. BIS’s sound and balance are excellent and the rest of this cycle is eagerly awaited. (Bryce Morrison - Gramophone)

Yevgeny Sudbin / Tapiola Sinfonietta / Osmo Vänskä BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos 1 & 2

Let me lay out information first of all: this is the conclusion of Yevgeny Sudbin’s cycle of the five Beethoven concertos that began, back to front, with an issue of Nos 4 and 5 together (4/11) and continued with a coupling of No 3 in C minor with the Mozart C minor Concerto (No 24), K491 (5/14). Osmo Vänskä has been the conductor throughout, with the Tapiola Sinfonietta here and previously with the Minnesota Orchestra. I note for now that the first CD was received with enthusiasm and was an Editor’s Choice; the next, in which No 3 was paired with the Mozart, fared less well.

It is impossible to hold back from admiration for Sudbin in whatever he plays, thanks to his brilliance and hallmark exuberance. He has much to say and he wants us to listen. You may feel the hyperactive style he brings to the outer movements of these concertos is just what they require. I am not so sure. The exuberance, for me, tips over to a cat-on-hot-bricks manner that too often seems a default position and wearisome. ‘Halt,’ I want to cry, ‘couldn’t you please occasionally calm down a bit?’ Need sforzato accents always be like touches of a whip and scales the length of a piece of string? Vänskä and the orchestra are willing partners. I resist too their bass-heavy sound world, built around microphone placements, which projects a nervy, fidgety view of dynamics in which a level is rarely sustained for its full term. Try the opening of the C major Concerto (No 1) – marked pianissimo until a crescendo leads into the first fortissimo at bar 16 – as an example of what I mean. To me, this is so much more exciting if the very quiet martial energy at the beginning is held taut. It’s the sort of detail a great conductor with a major orchestra and demanding soloist will agree upon and get right.

Oh dear, I’m sounding grouchy. I want the prospect of admiring Sudbin as much in Beethoven as in Scarlatti and Scriabin; but it is not there. He is sparky and generous with impulses and good ideas, but restless. The Largo of the C major Concerto, the longest slow movement in all the concertos, shows how the best of ‘early’ Beethoven is every bit as characteristic as the later, with an appreciation, in this instance, of the clarinet and solo writing for it that he never surpassed. I treated myself to Sony Classical’s box of Sviatoslav Richter’s complete live and studio recordings for RCA and Columbia; seek it out if you can for the performance he gave with Charles Munch and the Boston SO of this concerto in November 1960. Yes, from way back, I know, but incomparable.

Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny remarked that the master ‘brings out difficulties and effects on the piano that we could never have imagined’. Yevgeny Sudbin at his best is an artist capable of reminding us of that and there is plentiful evidence in these rondo finales. Don’t get me started on his cadenzas. They ignore all the material Beethoven left for Concerto No 1, which he finds wanting in various ways, playing in the first and last movements cadenzas of his own (‘based on Friedheim’). Suffer them if you can; I couldn’t possibly comment.

There’s a mistranslation in the booklet of the German note which makes a nonsense of where the cadenza comes in the first movement of the B flat Concerto (No 2). (Stephen Plaistow / Gramophone)

Leonidas Kavakos / Lahti Symphony Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä JEAN SIBELIUS Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47

There is a self-selecting audience for this disc. People who want to know what the withdrawn original version of the Violin Concerto of Sibelius will have to hear this recording by violinist Leonidas Kavakos with Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony. Sibelius withdrew the version of the Concerto premiered in 1904 shortened it, tightened it and focused it and premiered a second version in 1905. The revised version became a warhorse in the stable of violin concertos, but the original version disappeared until this world-premiere recording was released in 1990. 

Sibelius' original Violin Concerto is more expansive, more discursive, more overtly romantic, and more overtly virtuosic. By following a performance of the original version with a performance of the revised version, the weaknesses of the original are more obvious while the strengths of Sibelius' revisions are more apparent. Kavakos is a fine and fervent soloist who makes persuasive cases for each version of the work. Vänskä and the Lahti are sympathetic accompanists in either version of the work. An audience looking for a single recording of Sibelius' Violin Concerto should probably look for either the muscular and more passionate performance of Oistrakh or the virtuosic and more intense performance of Heifetz. But for the audience that has already heard several dozen recordings, hearing the original will be irresistible. BIS's sound on its 500th release is clear, deep, and real. (James Leonard)

THE UNKNOWN SIBELIUS Rarities and First Recordings

This nicely varied selection of little-known Sibelius contains four orchestral works, 7 songs and choruses, two chamber pieces, and four piano works. Some of it, such as the late Four Fragments for orchestra and most of the vocal pieces, is ephemeral indeed, but there are some fairly substantial works here as well. The two chamber pieces, a charming Serenade for string trio, and the incidental music to the symbolist play The Lizard (Ödlan), are interesting and important. Finland Awakes, an interim version of Finlandia, features the big hymn tune played complete at the end (first sound clip). Had the very last bars been less perfunctory, this could well be the preferred way to hear the work.
The original version of TheRead more Oceanides is also fascinating. Sibelius completely revised and extended it between initial composition and first performance. In its original form it had more of a rondo shape, justifying its original title: Rondo of the Waves. The revised version, on the other hand, follows Sibelius’ characteristic tone-poem shape of sonata form without development (that is, ABA’B'). That fabulous, huge climax toward the end is completely missing from the first version, as is the poetic coda. Although some thematic ideas are shared, the two works might as well be independent pieces.
The two outstanding piano pieces are the very ample Impromptu in B minor and a heartfelt Adagio dedicated to the composer’s wife, Aino. As previously mentioned, the Four Fragments, idiomatically orchestrated from Sibelius’ sketches by Timo Virtanen (second clip), are musically tantalizing but too short to tell us anything beyond the fact that they sound like Sibelius. The program ends with the impressive orchestral Processional arranged by Sibelius from his Musique religieuse (originally for tenor and harmonium). The performances, drawn from BIS’s generally wonderful complete Sibelius edition, are uniformly terrific, and so are the sonics. Essential for serious Sibelians. ( David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com)