The
Sibelius
Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63
, is a classically gloomy work, received coolly by its original audiences even though the composer was enormously popular.
wrote it while suffering from throat cancer that could easily have killed him; as it happened, surgery was successful, and he lived for another 46 years. It is generally taken to exemplify a peculiarly deep kind of Nordic gloom. Conductor
Santtu-Matias Rouvali
has gained quite a reputation for shaking up conventional interpretations, and interested listeners put this album on classical best-seller lists in early 2024. Here, he delivers more of the same, with a reading of the
Fourth
that is nervous and even a bit action-packed rather than gloomy. His performance is actually slightly slower than average, but it doesn't seem like it with all the little climaxes
Rouvali
inserts into the work. It is almost as if he is coming down on the side of the
contemporaries who argued for a hidden program in the symphony, something
himself denied. It is not a typical
, but it is intriguing, and the
Gothenburg Symphony
follows
effectively through unknown territory. In a work that does indeed have a program,
The Wood Nymph, Op. 15
,
offers a highly persuasive performance. He closes with a familiar work, the
Valse triste, Op. 44, No. 1
, but here again, he pushes the tempo; it is not an encore-type
Valse triste
. It is hard to know what to think of
's readings; perhaps he will set new standards, or perhaps they will be interpretational blips. Sample and decide. ~ James Manheim