Let’s start with the good news. This performance of the Third Symphony is as fine as any yet recorded. Conductor Pietari Inkinen understands that the work lives or dies on characterful string playing: clear rhythmic ostinatos, meaningful phrasing, and tempos that let the players articulate all of the detail that Sibelius wrote into the part. That’s exactly what we get. The first movement has lift, without undue haste. The reappearance of the second subject in the recapitulation is remarkably intense, the coda solemn but not dragging.
The central slow movement is perfectly paced, exactly midway between an Andante and a scherzo. The string pizzicatos are particularly well-balanced, the woodwind contributions consistently attractive. Best of all, the finale never threatens to turn anti-climactic. Inkinen judges the final accelerando with natural, unaffected mastery. He makes the music sound as though it’s playing itself, which is exactly as it should be.
I could almost recommend this disc for the Third Symphony alone, but the First is almost as bad as the Third is fine. The qualities that work so well in the Third–the care over little details–turn into fussiness and inhibition in the Romantically exuberant First. Who cares if the first-movement development is phenomenally clear if the climaxes sound for nothing, with weak timpani, tepid trombones, and wimpy cymbals? It’s a shame, but it only goes to underline how wrong it is for artists to embark on “cycles” when they really should just make great recordings. Had the coupling been the composer’s Fourth or Sixth symphonies, this might have been incredible.
