Oramo - Nielsen: Symphonies No 4 & 5 (2014)

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Oramo - Nielsen: Symphonies No 4 & 5 (2014)

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In 1962, when Leonard Bernstein chose to record Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony, this provided the composer with a wider international breakthrough some thirty years after his death. The work has since been hailed as one of the greatest symphonies of the twentieth century, but at its first performances during the early 1920’s audiences were less enthusiastic, finding it puzzling and difficult to understand. Although unwilling to provide an explanation of the symphony, Nielsen had however inscribed a kind of motto, ‘Dark, resting forces – Awakened forces’, at the end of his draft score and later wrote that it was ‘something very primitive I wanted to express: the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good.’ Some eight years earlier, as he began work on his Symphony No.4, similar thoughts had been stirring in the composer. In 1914, with the First World War about to engulf Europe, he had written to his wife about a work with which he hoped to express ‘what we understand by the life-urge’. Giving it the title ‘The Inextinguishable’ at its publication, Nielsen later explained his intentions further: ‘If the whole world was destroyed, Nature would once again begin to beget new life and push forward with the strong and fine forces that are to be found in the very stuff of existence… These “inextinguishable” forces are what I have tried to represent.’ These two central works in Nielsen’s production have now been selected for the first instalment of a complete Nielsen cycle by Sakari Oramo and his Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. Having enjoyed a close collaboration since 2008, this team has become ever more fine-tuned, as demonstrated on their previous BIS release, a performance of Edward Elgar’s mighty Second Symphony which was praised by the reviewer in Gramophone for ‘playing of conspicuous finesse and commendable ardour’ in an ‘abundantly characterful, cannily paced and deeply sincere traversal’.

Composer: Carl Nielsen
Conductor: Sakari Oramo
Orchestra/Ensemble: Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra

Reviews: After his gruesome Elgar Second, I have to confess that I had low expectations for this release of Nielsen’s Fourth and Fifth. After all, very few conductors do equally well by both works. Gibson, for example, produced a great Fourth and a limp Fifth, while Salonen delivered a fine Fifth but a distorted Fourth. In the event, Oramo succeeds in both, big time. His “Inextinguishable” is lithe, propulsive, well-proportioned, and he actually gets the tempo relationships right in the finale, which features terrific timpani battles and a thrilling peroration at the end. The performance also has plenty of personality, particularly in the finale, in terms of unusually clear phrasing and articulation, as well as impressively well-judged balances between brass and strings.

As for the Fifth, let’s get right to the point: it has one of the best snare drum cadenzas in the first movement of any recent performance. Oramo doesn’t pull out all of the stops too early: the initial eruption of Nielsen’s “evil forces” might strike some listeners as a touch tame, but this is only to save the best for the movement’s second half, where it really counts. The result is one of the most organic and cohesive versions of the opening movement yet committed to disc. Happily, the second movement goes just as well, with a mightily crazy first fugue, and a perfectly judged recapitulation and coda. The breath pause before the final chord is surely exactly what the composer ordered. BIS’ SACD sonics are, typically, excellent. If you want Nielsen’s two greatest symphonies on a single disc, you can’t do better than this.