Sibelius The Oceanides & Tapiola; Bruckner Symphony No 7: London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle
The link in the programming here – quite a tenuous one, really – is ‘landscapes in sound’. This is fairly obvious in the two Sibelius pieces, much less so for the Bruckner, where the association is meant, I suppose, to be with majestic Alpine ranges. But I am not really sure that Bruckner ever really thought in these terms when composing and the programme booklet doesn’t even attempt to justify it! Never mind – it is an understandable compulsion to link pieces together in a programme, but when you are listening to performances of this quality, it doesn’t really matter if there’s not much coherence…….
I have heard both Sibelius pieces over the past year. The Oceanides – they are the sea nymphs of classical myth, apparently – is a pretty piece , but neither very Sibelian nor that memorable, in my view. There was some beautiful flute playing, and Rattle brought out very clearly the structure of the work, with the crashing of the waves at the climax suitably impressive.. The orchestra was larger than I remembered, with two sets of timpani and a celesta. Tapiola is a work I can never quite tune into fully – I find its sound world gripping at the beginning in its evocation of a Northern icy forest, I find my mind wandering in the middle, and it comes back into focus for me as the final storm/evocation of the forest god starts. Rattle and the LSO gave what to me sounded like an excellent performance.
I have heard many fine Bruckner 7s over the years – conducted by Haitink, Solti, Jochum, Kempe, and others. Like the 4th symphony last year, the LSO performed the work in a new ‘Ur Text’ edition by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs. Again, as last year, it was difficult to identify many differences from the standard versions – occasionally I heard orchestral voices within a dense mass of sound which I hadn’t heard before, but it was difficult to say whether this was an effect of the new edition, or the conductor bringing out specific inner voices in the orchestral melee (or a lack of control of the players, which I doubt). The performance was relatively swift, which worked well for the last two movements but occasionally meant that the first two didn’t have enough of the moments of repose and contemplation which they ideally should have. Another advantage, though, of a swifter approach is that the structure always seemed clear and this is particularly important in the finale, which can sometimes feel very episodic. It was by no means though a driven approach and there were plenty of well-handled lyrical moments in, say the Trio or the end of the slow movement, as well as plenty of flexibility of tempo when needed. Throughout the playing was very fine indeed. The 8 double basses ranged across the back of the stage gave a firm dark foundation to the sound, the Wagner tubas were beautifully played, the LSO brass sounded majestic rather than raucous and the rest of the strings had both heft and sweetness. It would be lovely if Rattle gave us a Bruckner 9 with the completed finale (though he seems to be working with Cohrs and maybe there’ll be no more Rattle Bruckner when he leaves the LSO – I can’t see Pappano as a natural Bruckner conductor……). I thought this was an excellent performance…..
John's musical journey 