The Iceland Symphony’s ongoing Sibelius symphony cycle has been generally disappointing, so it’s pleasing to be able to report that this performance of the Lemminkäinen Suite is as good as any available, and vastly superior to Vänskä’s recent release with the Lahti Symphony on BIS. Conductor Petri Sakari really energizes his players, and they respond with genuinely characterful playing, not just the excellent principal winds, but every orchestral department–witness the virtuoso string playing in “Lemminkäinen’s Homecoming”. Sakari paces each movement just about perfectly, and he really captures the “legendary” quality of the writing–its primal, folk-like qualities. The extremely natural recording helps: balances between winds and strings reveal a wealth of orchestral detail that normally gets buried, and if the performances of Karelia and Finlandia aren’t on quite the same level, the difference isn’t significant enough to preclude a strong recommendation overall.
