I listened to a CD with Sieblius "Karelia", "Christian II" and "Pelleas
et Melisande" with Lahti Symphony Orchestra/Osmo Vaenskae.  I highly
recommend this CD!  The performances are excellent, and the music is too.
I have always regarded Vaenskae an interesting conductor; his Mendelssons
"Schottish" is very fine, and his new Beethoven 1 is indeed very
interesting.  It sounds unlike most of Beethoven 1:s I have heard,
he certainly speaks with an own voice.

The recordings on this disc are more traditional, nothing original with
them, just for the thing that they are astonishingly good.  But always one
can argue that a conductor who learns conducting with conducting Sibelius,
should know this music as wella s his own pocket.

The BIS CD features the first recordings after Sibelius original scores,
and that made me get the chance to hear those works in a new light.  I was
overwhelmed by the "Karelia", and the "Kristian II" is very good too, but
actually I listened for "Pelleas et Melisande".

The piece "Pelleas et Melisande", is inspired by Maeterlincks play, exactly
as DeBussys opera.  I had high expectations as DeBussys work completely
owerwhelmed me when I first heard it some years ago.  Music can affect me
strongly, but seldom so much I cry, but this time it for once did.  The
tears of the touch of beauty, intellectually and emotionally.

Sibelius "Pelleas et Melisande" doesn't stand the opera after.  it consists
of 10 short wiews on a total duration of 30 minutes, and every image tells
about the lovers from a new perspective, and every image has its own
charming personality, although all hang together with the typical Sibelian
way of developing themes organically out of each other.

The parts bear the titles:

   1. At the Castle Gate
   2. Melisande
   3. At the Seashore
   4. By a Spring in the Park
   5. Melisande at the Spinningwheel
   6. Three blind Sisters
   7. Pastorale
   8. Entr'acte
   9. [omitted from concerts suite - therefore noname]
   10. The death of Melisande

Sibelius was a composer who had much to say, but he didn't - like Mahler
- babble in hours, and thats also why his symphonies are shorter than
Mahlers.  These pictures presented here are short, but so rich!  How
wonderful does not Sibelius paint the dawn at the castle, how beautiful
isn't Melisande in the second image, how mystically wonderful doesn't the
forest murmur in the pastorale?

The performance is - again - stunning.  The phrasings and dynamics are
carefully taken and worked out in a way that you rarely hear (Sibelius
scores are sometimes VERY detailed - through a goateye in Lemminkainen!  -
and it demands much work and interest to play what Sibelius actually wrote
- here the result is very successful).  How passionately the perforers live
themselves into the moods in the piece, as if Melisande really sat combing
her hair in a tower above the orchestra.

This work I consider one of Sibelius most tender, its richness in so many
ways, a work that is short, but comprimated and complex, it gives really an
intellectual as well as an emotional challenge.

High expectations are dangerous, but Melisande surely passes the test.
Still, Sibelius on top is so rich so you will always find new values, I
know that.  To conclude:  Wagner said something about this in "Das
Rheingold", which could be illustrative here;

   "Zur Burg fuehrt die Bruecke,
    leicht, doch fest eurem Fuss
    beschreitet kuehn
    ihren schrecklosen Pfad!"

Mats Norrman
[log in to unmask]