Jean Sibelius - Orchestral Songs (Gerald Finley; Edward Gardner)

Information

Composer: Jean Sibelius

1. Pohjola’s Daughter, Op. 49
2. In the Stream of Life (orch. Einojuhani Rautavaara): 1. Die stille Stadt, Op. 50 No. 5
3. In the Stream of Life (orch. Einojuhani Rautavaara): 2. Jägargossen, Op. 13 No. 7
4. In the Stream of Life (orch. Einojuhani Rautavaara): 3. Hjärtats morgon, Op. 13 No. 3
5. In the Stream of Life (orch. Einojuhani Rautavaara): 4. Älven och snigeln, Op. 57 No. 1
6. In the Stream of Life (orch. Einojuhani Rautavaara): 5. Näcken, Op. 57 No. 8
7. In the Stream of Life (orch. Einojuhani Rautavaara): 6. Jag är ett träd, Op. 57 No. 5
8. In the Stream of Life (orch. Einojuhani Rautavaara): 7. Svarta rosor, Op. 36 No. 1
9. Koskenlaskijan morsiamet, Op. 33
10. Romance in C major, Op. 42
11. Hymn to Thaïs, the Unforgettable (orch. Jussi Jalas)
12. Demanten på marssnön, Op. 36 No. 6 (orch. Ivar Hellman)
13. Hertig Magnus, Op. 57 No. 6 (orch. Pekka Helasvuo)
14. The Oceanides, Op. 73
15. På verandan vid havet, Op. 38 No. 2
16. I natten, Op. 38 No. 3
17. Kom nu hit, död, Op. 60 No. 1

Gerald Finley, bass-baritone

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra

Edward Gardner, conductor

Date: 2017

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205178

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Review

Even in the English-speaking world, where Sibelius has mostly enjoyed a high reputation, his vocal music remains undervalued. The language barrier hasn’t helped, nor has his ungrateful piano-writing. Sibelius’s art song accompaniments habitually imply fuller textures yet he himself scored relatively few for larger forces, posing problems of authenticity for determined advocates like Gerald Finley. I can’t recall a high-profile disc of orchestrally accompanied Sibelius songs since that of Soile Isokoski (Ondine, 7/06) and you have to look back to the mid-Nineties for a similar miscellany featuring a male soloist: Jorma Hynninen, again with Leif Segerstam directing for the same label. Although Hynninen enjoyed a long association with the late Einojuhani Rautavaara, it was for the Canadian’s similarly focused albeit less insistently heroic bass-baritone that the composer orchestrated seven Sibelius songs in the slipstream of his own Omar Khayyám cycle, Rubáiyát. The booklet contains a tribute from Finley reviewing their late-blooming friendship. Odd, then, that its cover makes no mention of Rautavaara’s involvement, despite applying the title of his Sibelius selection, In the Stream of Life, to the album as a whole.

In making his choices Rautavaara seems to have wanted to reflect Sibelius’s broad stylistic range from full-blooded Romanticism to gnomic modernism. The languages set are various too: German and Finnish as well as Swedish. In the opening ‘Die stille Stadt’ (‘The Silent City’), where Segerstam as orchestrator felt the need to vary the string textures, Rautavaara provides a continuous quasi-mystical sheen, the undulations allocated to clarinet and flute rather than harp, the surface discreetly flecked with glockenspiel. The sequence calls for a relatively small orchestra with enthusiastic timpanist. Winningly sung as it is, the familiar climactic number, ‘Svarta rosor’ (‘Black Roses’), struck me as underdressed.

Finley appends a further seven songs, arranged by other hands. The ‘Hymn to Thaïs’ is the most obscure. Devised in 1909, reconstructed in 1945 and rededicated to Aulikki Rautawaara (sic), the composer’s cousin, it is given in its original English. More musically significant highlights include ‘Kom nu hit, död’ (‘Come away, Death’), in the ‘white dwarf’ string arrangement on which Sibelius was supposedly working at the very end of his life, and the epic Finnish-language ‘Koskenlaskijan morsiamet’ (awkwardly translated as ‘The Rapids-Shooter’s Brides’), which he composed half a century earlier at the time of the Lemminkäinen Suite. Both performances come off well, without trumping the natural articulation and jet-black tautness of Hynninen with Jorma Panula in Gothenburg (BIS, 11/85).

There are also three purely orchestral pieces. Gardner and the orchestra kick off proceedings with an impressionistic account of Pohjola’s Daughter, its narrative characterised by fine detail as much as unrelenting forward drive, woodwind naturally placed rather than spotlit. The Romance for strings makes an attractive interlude, pressed into service between thematically related songs. Likewise the more volatile Oceanides. While Osmo Vänskä (BIS, 9/02) may be more successful in showing how Sibelius’s water music constantly transforms itself, every eddy and current climaxing at subtly different points, Gardner’s softer grain is persuasive too, enhancing this impressive if idiosyncratic programme.

-- David Gutman, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/Mar/Sibelius_songs_CHSA5178.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/stream-life-gerald-finley-performs-songs-sibelius/

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jan/04/sibelius-in-the-stream-of-life-review-gerald-finley

https://www.audaud.com/jean-sibelius-in-the-stream-of-life-songs-gerald-finley-bassbar-bergen-phil-orch-edward-gardner-chandos/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/sibelius-in-the-stream-of-life-mw0003004526

https://www.ft.com/content/81288f30-d60a-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e

https://www.amazon.com/Stream-Life-Songs-Sibelius/dp/B01N4804VO

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Jean Sibelius (8 December 1865 – 20 September 1957) was a Finnish violinist and composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. His music contributed to the development of a feeling of national identity in Finland where he is now celebrated as the country's greatest composer. Sibelius is widely known for his seven symphonies, the violin concerto and the tone poems, especially Finlandia and the Karelia suite. Throughout his career, the composer found inspiration in nature and Nordic mythology. He almost completely stopped composing after 1920s and did not produce any large-scale works in his last thirty years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Sibelius

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Gerald Finley (born January 30, 1960 in Montreal) is a Canadian baritone opera singer. He received his musical education in St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Ottawa, the University of Ottawa, King's College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music in London, England. Finley is particularly renowned for his interpretations of Mozart roles such as Guglielmo, Papageno, Figaro, the Count and Don Giovanni. He has been critically praised both in opera and in concert, being praised by audience and critics alike. Finley has appeared on a number of recordings, including several solo albums on the Hyperion label.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Finley
http://www.geraldfinley.com/

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Edward Gardner (born 22 November 1974 in Gloucester) is an English conductor. He attended University of Cambridge as a music student, and was a choral scholar in King's College Choir. He also studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where his teachers included Colin Metters. He was music director of English National Opera (2006-2015), principal guest conductor of  the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (2011-2016). He is currently principal conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. Gardner has conducted several recordings for EMI Classics and Chandos. Records.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gardner_(conductor)

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