Symphony No. 4; The Wood Nymph; Valse Triste
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra/Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Alpha Classics ALPHA1008 64:29 mins
Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony: dark Nordic pastoral, or even darker spiritual odyssey? Interpretations tend to veer towards one view or the other. It’s one of the many impressive features of Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s new version with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra that it manages to dance imaginatively between both. The feeling of space, the damp chill in the air, the sense of nature awe-inspiring and inimical – it’s all there from the start. But so, too, is the sense of a door swinging open on a shadowy inner world, being somehow forbidding and compelling at the same time.
Rouvali works to bring out detail, sometimes creating a kind of chamber-opera dialogue between instruments and orchestral sections, yet his grasp of the long line holds fast throughout. The austere, haunted first movement yields effortlessly to the agitated, increasingly desperate merrymaking of the scherzo, which then dissipates eerily into the Largo, with its agonising slow struggle towards the light that ultimately fails. Rouvali takes his time there: not quite as largo as Osmo Vänskä (there’s a tiny increase in tempo in the middle section), but close. He also allows a degree of slowing down in the ‘things fall apart’ coda, but not enough to lose momentum.
It’s a strong Fourth, worthy of comparison with the best, but the performance of The Wood Nymph is simply the best to appear so far. Symphonic drive and storytelling are balanced magnificently throughout, right up to the opulently grim ending. Early Sibelius it may be, but it’s gripping, atmospheric and utterly unique. Finally comes a Valse Triste with more than usual stress on the programmatic element, and it’s none the worse for that. Everything is beautifully recorded by Alpha Classics too.
