John Storgards, BBC Philharmonic - Nielsen: Complete Symphonies (2015)

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John Storgards, BBC Philharmonic - Nielsen: Complete Symphonies (2015)

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John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic here present a complete set of Nielsen’s symphonies, following on from the successful release a year ago of Sibelius’ complete symphonies. The two sets together celebrate the 150th anniversary this year of the birth of both composers. Several concerts devoted to Nielsen’s symphonies, played by the same forces, coincide with this release: on BBC 3 in February, at the Nielsen and Sibelius festival in Stockholm in April, during a week of celebrations at the Bridgewater Hall in June, etc.

Among the most performed works by Nielsen, these symphonies also reflect the composer’s musical emancipation from his early influences of folk music, Bach, Mozart, and even Brahms, Schumann, and Grieg, and his experimentation with progressive tonality and, later, radical departures from traditional compositional styles.

‘Carl Nielsen looked life straight in the face, and he never blinked: how many composers put their own heart attack into music? But no matter how startling, how vivid, or how outright eccentric Nielsen’s Sixth Symphony gets, it’s never depressing: this is music of life, not death. Everyone needs to hear it, and there’s no better guide than our principal guest conductor John Storgårds’ BBC PO concert programme.’ BBC Philharmonic programme notes

Reviews: For many years, the complete sets of Nielsen symphonies conducted by Ole Schmidt with the LSO and by Herbert Blomstedt with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra (EMI) or the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (Decca) had this particular niche of the market to themselves, though there were important individual symphony recordings by people like Leonard Bernstein and Thomas Jensen (review review). How things change. Since the turn of the century, there has been a constant stream of complete cycles on CD, many highly distinguished, such as those from Colin Davis, (LSO Live - Jack Lawson and see also John Quinn's review and another impending and contrasting one from Dominy Clements), Neeme Järvi (DG Trio), Rozhdestvensky and Bryden Thomson (both Chandos). Earlier today, I heard Building a Library on BBC Radio 3, where Andrew Mellor discussed recordings of the Sinfonia Espansiva, coming up with the decision that Myung-Whun Chung’s BIS CD from his Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra set was his favourite. Alan Gilbert has just completed his cycle with the New York Philharmonic on the Danish Dacapo label (Symphonies 1 & 4; Symphonies 2 & 3; Symphonies 5 & 6).

So is there room for yet another contender, especially as it is one more from the Chandos stable? The answer, for me at any rate, is a resounding ‘Yes’, with Finnish maestro John Storgårds once more leading the BBC Philharmonic in following up their fine Sibelius complete symphonies of a year or so back (Chandos CHAN10809(3)). He gives alert, dramatic and brilliantly detailed performances of all six of these great works, characterising them sharply, and bringing out their stunning originality, their deliberate waywardness - or cussedness, if you like - as well as their composer’s captivating sense of humour. Incidentally, I mentioned BBC Building a Library above, and I should say that it was pointed out that Storgård’s recording of the Espansiva arrived too late to be considered in that choice, but that the complete cycle would be featured in CD Review on 13 June 2015.

Storgårds has the capacity to draw the best out of the BBC Philharmonic. It has always been a superb orchestra; during the 1970s and 1980s they were Manchester’s best, given that the Hallé was going through its difficult post-Barbirolli years. Many people, myself included, would say that they can be - again at their best - even finer than the London-based BBC Symphony Orchestra. Fine margins; but listen to these discs and you will hear playing of the very highest quality from every section, as well as a beautifully integrated tutti sound when needed. The Chandos engineers have captured all this perfectly; you can’t afford any artificial balancing in Nielsen, for it must above all sound natural, allowing the instruments to establish internal relationships one with another.

For me, the first two symphonies were a revelation, as they are the ones I knew least well. Yes, the First is a work that has its roots firmly in the 19th century tradition, but its stormy opening projects the composer’s personality strongly, with an impetuosity and a certain impatience to ‘get on with it’ that we find also at the start of the next three symphonies. The Andante has a Beethovenian inwardness, and gives a clear taste of the beauty of the Philharmonic’s string tone, as well as some fine woodwind contributions. Storgårds, all the way through the cycle, insists on a very wide dynamic range, from almost inaudible pianissimo to crashing fortissimo; this is done for all the absolutely right musical reasons, but could make it a challenge to set your volume control at the right level.

That impetuosity I mentioned is of course felt powerfully in the first movement of Symphony no.2, subtitled The Four Temperaments. The marking is Allegro collerico, and the music expresses anger, passion and fire in equal measure. Those who met this composer always describe him as a mild-mannered, gently spoken man; yet clearly there was tremendous anger raging within, for it breaks into his music constantly, not just here where it is ‘nominated’.

The Allegro comodo e flemmatico perfectly expresses ‘phlegmatic’ calm, while the middle section brings to the fore an important Nielsen fingerprint, namely the use of repeated notes, usually marked staccato. These threaten to disturb the tranquillity, but are rapidly dismissed. Not so the melancholy of the beautiful and uneasy third movement, where Storgårds once more calls forth wonderfully rich sounds from his strings. The intensity of this brings to mind, for me, the music of Nielsen’s contemporaries Albéric Magnard or even (stretching the dates a bit) Samuel Barber. It’s a fine movement, but creates a problem in that the ‘sanguine’ finale does feel a bit like a dog that’s been cooped up for too long being let loose in the wide open spaces. Nielsen’s inventiveness, and the brilliance of the playing here, won me over, but it’s not perhaps the composer’s greatest moment.

With CD 2, we arrive at the works on which Nielsen’s reputation truly rests; we have here the Espansiva and the Inextinguishable, both works of stunning power and inventiveness. We are told that Nielsen himself, when rehearsing the opening of Symphony no.3 for the first time, quailed somewhat at all those explosive repeated notes but what an opening. Unlike some composers who manage gripping openings which they can’t quite follow up, Nielsen is up to the challenge, writing a first movement that is indeed expansive, but emotionally very complex. I found Storgårds here absolutely superb, balancing detail and the great sweep of the structure ideally well.

However, there is a drawback to this performance, and it comes in the second movement. This is where Nielsen had the poetic idea of two wordless voices, male and female, that emerge towards the end of the movement. It’s a wonderful concept, and potentially magical, but also fraught with dangers and problems. The voices need to sound effortless and natural, not at all stagey or grandly expressive; Storgård’s baritone, Mark Stone – though a singer I admire greatly – simply overdoes it, with fulsome operatic tone. Such a pity, because it’s a key moment in the symphony. In fairness, I can’t say I’ve come across a recording yet that gets it just right, in terms of the timbre of the voices and their placing in relation to the orchestra.

The third movement of the Espansiva picks up the rather despondent mood with which the Andante finishes, after that vision of pastoral beauty has faded. Wonderful phrasing from the Philharmonic’s principal oboe, and great contrast between this and the irascible music that immediately interrupts it. This is one of Nielsen’s most equivocal and fascinating movements, alternating between swaying dance themes and questing fugato passages that must have made Shostakovich sit up and think — you’ll see what I mean if you listen to track 3, 3:52 to about 4:25. The ending, with its eddying flute solo slowly settling, brings us back to exactly where we were at the end of the second movement; little emotional progress, despite all the hard work.

This is what makes Nielsen such a very great symphonist; he presents a problem, then explores different ‘solutions’, eventually finding one that can carry all before it. His ultimate reference point could be said to be the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, where themes of previous movements are paraded and systematically rejected before the arrival of the Joy theme.

Nielsen’s solution arrives in the shape of the magnificent muscular theme of the fourth movement, which propels the symphony to its resounding conclusion. Once more, I was struck by Storgård’s avoidance of exaggerating or distorting the music; here I find him superior, or preferable, to Myung-Whun Chung, who overplays it rather sensationally; very exciting, but for me OTT.

It might seem a long way from the affirmation of that finale to the wrath and chaos that often engulfs the listener in the first movement of the Inextinguishable, Symphony no.4. It is not really that far; anger and frustration are present in all of the first three movements of the Espansiva, and they become the subject matter of this next symphony, rather than its subtext. There is humour too, in the way the spectral end of the Allegro is replaced calmly by a Mozartian wind serenade at the outset of the poco allegretto. That insouciant music is itself soon summarily ousted by the great lament of the strings, punctuated by the hammer-strokes of the timpani, that announce the beginning of the poco adagio third movement.

All of this is characterised with mesmerising intensity by these musicians; Storgårds allows the tension in the poco adagio to grow imperceptibly, until it becomes almost unbearable, bursting out at last in the hectic finale. The high-point here is the famous ‘battle of the timpani’, in which, for maximum impact, the composer wanted the two players and their drums placed as near the audience as possible. I always cherish the great Robert Simpson’s comment on this: “Conductors seem unwilling to risk this, fearing perhaps an incontinent flight from the stalls’. Nicely put. Storgård’s timpanists — named in the CD notes, along with various other key instrumentalists, a welcome touch — have a rare old punch-up. I love that they are using really hard sticks, which gives huge benefit not only in terms of physical impact, but of clarity too.

The intrusion of a percussion instrument, seemingly intent on malevolent disruption, also plays a vital role in the first movement of the next symphony, no.5, which is probably nowadays Nielsen’s most often performed work. It is cast in two large movements, both sub-divided into a number of contrasting sections. Unlike the first four symphonies, it begins softly, with a two-note ostinato in the violas, against which the bassoons give out an unquiet, fragmented theme. Beautifully shaped by the players, with Storgårds at the quick end of the tempo spectrum here. This pays dividends, because this opening section can seem very long drawn-out until things begin to hot up with the arrival of the militaristic side-drum a few minutes in. As in the finale of the Fourth, the climax arrives with a pitch battle, this time between the side-drum and the rest of the orchestra. Nielsen, in his score, instructs the drummer to ‘try to stop the course of the music’. It is even more dramatic, one of the most gripping pieces of purely musical theatre in the whole of symphonic literature. It is thrilling here, though with one important reservation; as the crescendo builds towards the conflict, all the strings repeatedly play fortissimo a terse phrase of demi-semiquavers which has been initiated by the woodwind. This must be heard - but alas in this recording disappears far too soon in the general clamour.

Once the finale gets underway, there is, for quite a lot of the time, very little a conductor can do but beat time as accurately and firmly as possible — believe me, I’ve tried it — so busy and intricate is the string figuration that continues throughout the much of the movement. At first I thought Storgårds’ tempo just a little too slow to provide the necessary urgency but it pays off in the end, again in terms of clarity and momentum.

Another fascinating study is Nielsen’s use of fugue in the symphonies; indeed, he can be given credit for having revived its importance in symphonic discourse. There are two wonderful fugues in this finale; the first a scary “witches’ Sabbath”, which eventually disappears up its own broomstick handle; the second a very beautiful slowly unfolding passage, at first for strings alone, but gradually drawing in the whole orchestra. There is a palpable sense here of the music turning inwards to discover truth, and it paves the way for an affirmative but never complacent coda. It’s always a near-surprise when the end comes – a sudden realisation that we are home and dry. Storgårds steers the music rather than driving it, and the effect is powerfully satisfying.

So to the unique Sinfonia Semplice, the sixth and final symphony. I mentioned Shostakovich earlier on, and I have always felt a kinship between the two composers’ final symphonies. David Fanning points out in his excellent booklet notes, Shostakovich was composing his first symphony while Nielsen was writing this final one. Not only does each symphony open with tinkling percussion, but both first movements have that unsettling character of games which go wrong, sinister elements creeping in and spoiling the party. I found this the finest performance in the set, for Storgårds is equally successful in the humorous and the dark music, finding the perfect tempo to bind the movement together.

The middle movements are equally remarkable; a deeply sarcastic scherzo which the composer said was to some extent a critique of ‘modern music’. Great fun, with the muted trombone glissandi hilariously rude. Then follows the ‘Serious Proposition’ (proposta seria) of the slow third movement; an uneasy, and at times agonised outpouring, that ends in an emotionally neutral tone, suggesting that the worst may be behind us. The finale opens with a lively introduction, leading to the theme that becomes the subject of nine terrific variations, first presented by the solo unaccompanied bassoon. Storgårds and his players characterise these variations with brilliant sharpness - the waltz of Variation 6 is pure delight, and there’s even a duet for xylophone and tuba. It all ends with one of the best rude jokes in music – what a piece.

I had a wonderful time listening to these superb performances, and felt the deepest admiration for conductor and orchestra. This may not be very helpful, but I have to say I would find it quite impossible to ‘rank’ it, to place it above such and such a set, and below another. This music is so complex, so very extraordinary that one could never achieve sincere agreement on the ‘best’ set from the many fine ones now available. All I can say is that this one is a major contender, and does full justice to this magnificent symphonist.