Publication of Symphonies nbone 3 and 4 on record by Atma this Friday, recording of the 5e Symphony the same evening in concert at the Maison symphonique and announcement of a concert at Carnegie Hall with the 2e Symphony : the music of Jean Sibelius punctuates the life of the Orchester Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
After the Symphonies nbone 1, 3 and 4, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Le Métropolitain take on the Finnish composer’s two most popular symphonies. There 5e Symphony will be recorded by Atma during the concert on Friday, between two performances of Lohengrin conducted by the Quebec conductor at the Metropolitan Opera (broadcast live in cinemas on March 18). The concert at the Maison symphonique also offers the ballad for orchestra by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the 3e piano concerto by Prokofiev with David Jalbert.
There 2e Symphony is on the program next March, notably during a concert that will bring the Orchester Métropolitain back to New York. On March 6, 2024, OM will take over the Carnegie Hall stage at the Vienna Philharmonic with, in addition to Sibelius, the 2e Concerto by Rachmaninoff associated with Tony Siqi Yun and a composition by Cris Derksen, a Cree cellist from Alberta. Derksen, who refers to two-spiritedness or ” two spirit “, “challenges a world where almost everything – people, music, cultures – is labeled and classified in simple categories”, as his biography puts it.
A hollow
At the dawn of these decisive stages of the cycle appears on CD the meeting of the Symphonies nbone 3 And 4. The disc perfectly sums up the general problem of the cycles of the Sibelius symphonies: their irregularity. It is very rare to see a chef succeed in everything. In the present case, the 4e Symphony risks being the weak point of Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s integral.
There Thirdrecorded in June 2021, had already been released digitally in October 2021. The vision, served by an exceptional sound recording (the Maison symphonique with 250 spectators in times of pandemic) doing justice to the polyphonic clarity taken care of by the conductor, stands out by a very clear and very melancholic articulation of the 2e movement. A bit like the Finnish chef Osmo Vänskä and at the antipodes of other references like the Cartesian Olli Mustonen. Sibelius himself had defined his Final as “the crystallization of chaos”, because the composer brings various sources together. It is interesting to hear how Yannick Nézet-Séguin progressively outlines the affirmation of these themes: it’s very successful.
It is quite different with 4e Symphony. If we exclude the very singular compositions of the Swedish Allan Pettersson (1911-1980), it is, with the6e Symphony by Mahler, the blackest and most pessimistic symphony in the repertoire. Among the great versions, we can cite Hans Rosbaud (DG), Herbert Kegel (Berlin) and, more traditionally, Herbert von Karajan (DG, EMI), and near us, the two engravings by Osmo Vänskä (BIS). In all these cases, the 3e movement is almost unbearable emotional tension. Here it passes like an appointment at the hairdresser.
We tried to understand if there was an aesthetic reason for defusing the pressure a little, but after several listens and following the score, it appears that it is really the lack of weight of the cello section and the blandness of the expressive range of the dynamic bellows that causes the problem. Compared to the concert, the disc corrects the issues of intonation, but not the issues of presence and impact. In the discographic legacy of any musician, there are less good opuses. This is one.