Salonen's Complete Sony Recordings, part 3

This review will cover discs 30 through 39.

• Olivier Messiaen: Des canyons aux étoiles... Movements one through nine, Paul Crossley piano and the London Sinfonietta, recorded in 1988. I don't know this piece as well as some other Messiaen. At well over an hour and a half, Des canyons is a very substantial piece. The solo piano has a great deal to do and the sixth movement, Appel interstellaire, is for solo horn (played by Michael Thompson) and is extraordinarily difficult. There are also a number of unusual percussion instruments such as the geophone, invented by Messiaen specifically for this piece.
• Des Canyons continued with movements ten to twelve plus Oiseaux exotiques, Couleurs de la cité céleste Oiseaux exotiques is quite an exotic piece itself, written for solo piano and orchestra of winds and percussion. It uses a great deal of birdsong as basic material and the rhythms are derived from the Carnatic music of southern India and ancient Greek music. Couleurs is written for roughly the same ensemble of solo piano, winds and metallophones. It is rather hard to review performances of works like these. One longs for the scores, but comparison with the performance would merely give one a sense of how accurate it was, not how expressive or authentic it was. So we are thrown back on the originality and expressiveness of Messiaen's approach to music.
• Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 1 in G minor, [Little] Suite for String Orchestra in A minor The first disc of Salonen's survey of all the symphonies and much of the other orchestral music of the iconic Danish composer is very well done. All the discs are with the Swedish Radio Symphony who bring a solid, meaty strength to the performances. The recording is from 1986.
• Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 2 "The Four Temperaments,"Aladdin Suite The Second Symphony is a real advance over the first, much more intense and dynamic and this is an excellent performance with lots of expressive juice. The disc also contains his brief symphonic poem Pan and Syrinx and the seven movement suite of incidental music to Aladdin. Recorded in 1988/89.
• Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 3 "Sinfonia espansiva," Symphony No. 6 "Sinfonia semplice" The Symphony No. 3 was a much bigger success than his previous symphonies with many international performances in the first few years after its premiere. It is unique in that the second movement has wordless parts for soprano and baritone. The first movement is powerfully syncopated with a lot of drive that the Swedes really deliver. The Symphony No. 6 is the most challenging with unusual textures and harsh harmonic passages. Possibly the only symphony to end with a single low note from a solo bassoon.
• Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 4 "The Inextinguishable," Helios Overture Written during the first part of WWI, this is one of Nielsen's most successful symphonies. The title refers to what the symphony is "about": the inextinguishable will to live. The irony is that this was composed at the precise moment that European civilization was engaged in a suicidal war. The last movement features a duel between two sets of tympani. One interesting element of Nielsen's symphonic style is the prominence and independence of his percussion parts which often have a nearly "melodic" role.
• Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 5, Maskarade By the time you get to the Symphony No. 5 you recognize that Nielsen's symphonic voice, though certainly sharing a general approach with Beethoven and Brahms, is distinctly different. His colors and textures have more edge and his developments follow they own sorts of rules. the Fifth, like the Fourth before it, has an obsessive use of percussion, especially the snare drum. While the mood of the Fifth, dating from 1922, certainly has a deal to do with the horrors of the First World War, it has no program as such. Denmark's national opera is Nielsen's comic Masquerade and the disc ends with three orchestral excerpts. As before, these performances are outstanding. I have previously listened to the Blomstedt/San Francisco complete set and, for some reason, did not find the music interesting enough to investigate further. Not the case with this set, which is quite compelling. The recording dates from 1987.
• Jean Sibelius: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Carl Nielsen: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra I know the Sibelius concerto from Salonen's recent Deutsche Gramophon recording with Hilary Hahn. There it is heard alongside the Schoenberg Violin Concerto. The Sibelius is a lovely piece and this disc enables us to do a side-by-side comparison of the two Nordic masters. The Sibelius is with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Nielsen with the Swedish Radio Symphony and the recordings date from 1987 and 88. Sibelius and Nielsen are almost exact contemporaries, both born in 1865. Sibelius lived longer, but wrote little in his later decades so their productive years overlap exactly. Sibelius seemed to come up with more winning melodies and saw earlier success. Nielsen is less overtly charming and his success came later. In fact, his orchestral music didn't really become part of the mainstream repertoire until the 1960s. His Violin Concerto is a bit grittier and more intently focused than Sibelius' though certainly not lacking in beauty.
• Carl Nielsen: Saul og David, Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, En fantasirejse til Færøerne, Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Fynsk foraar (eight short movements) This disc completes Salonen's survey of the orchestral music of Nielsen and includes his other two concertos, both for solo winds, the Prelude to Act II of his opera Saul and David as well as his tone poem on a journey to the Faroe Islands and the "lyrical humoresque" on springtime on Funen, an island where he spent a great deal of time. The concerto for clarinet makes good use of both the comic and virtuoso aspects of the instrument but also brings out a good deal of intense expression. Nielsen's background experience with bands proved useful in both this piece and the concerto for flute.
• Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet The ballet was written largely over the summer of 1935 but not premiered in the Soviet Union until 1940. The full ballet, in four acts, takes an entire evening to perform. Excerpts from each act have been selected for the recording which was made in 1986 with the Berlin Philharmonic. The famous "Dance of the Knights" is found in Act I. You can certainly hear why the Berlin Philharmonic are so admired for their low bass sound.

That brings this part of the review to an end. I think I will have two more parts with about ten discs each. Later I will have some comments on Salonen's conducting in general.