Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Finland is one of those countries where they put their famous artists on their money. Despite my respect for the ladies and gentlemen gracing our currency, I wish we put our great artists on our money. It’s hard to think of a more famous Finn than Sibelius, and he graces or graced the 100 mark note in Finland.

After listening to this, it’s hard to imagine there could have been any greater Finn ever, so I guess it’s appropriate that I can’t name any others off the top of my head. This double CD has his last four symphonies, one movement (“The Swan Of Tuonela”) from a larger piece based on Finnish mythology that is possibly his most famous work and contains possibly the most famous English horn solo in the canon, and a 20-minute tone poem written about the Finnish forest (Tapiola).

On first listen, Sibelius doesn’t quite fit into the radical mold of much of the 20th Century classical music I’ve been listening to lately. In fact, I think most ears accustomed primarily to popular music wouldn’t think twice about throwing it in with Beethoven and Mozart. Closer listening, however, reveals that, despite the conventional instrumentation and emphasis on tonality and thematic development, there are halting, unsure vacillations in the rhythm and a brooding angst underlying almost every minute of these pieces.

Sibelius, as the reputation of the Finns would suggest, suffered from severe loneliness, depression, and solitude, and naturally it comes through in his music. The third movement of the Fourth Symphony takes forever to do anything; themes are started, left incomplete, and then subside to the same theme emerging a bit differently or stand aside for a new theme altogether. Finally, at the 7:45 mark we get about 50 seconds of sublime beauty, but it falls back down in its bed to mutter away for several more minutes, making hearty attempts here and there but never quite becoming ambulatory. The final movement feels as if it was written by a man about to take his own life. It’s nine-and-a-half minutes of music falling apart, as if it can barely will itself to go on. Here we have a violin ostinato, there the winds pipe up for a brief moment. Things end in a sea of lukewarm entropy, everything having fallen apart.

Symphonies Five and Six are alternately Sibelius’ greatest symphony, depending on which one I’m listening to. The first movement of the Fifth is a masterpiece. At times it is bold, stately, fast, gripping… everything that the Fourth was not, the manic to the Fourth’s depressive. The Sixth is the controlled middle ground, healthy, and reaching for inspiration and guidance from the Overture to Wagner’s Lohengrin, one of my favorite pieces.

If the thought of a Finnish forest, especially during a long, dark winter, frigthens you, I don’t recommend listening to Tapiola, because your pants will be wet with “fear” before it’s over. From catchy but harmonically tricky thematic development at the start to total Wagner/John Williams-Darth Vader moments midway through to howling and screeching in the violins that would put the most abrasive David Lynch moments to shame, this is one of the darkest and greatest dark pieces in the history of music.

I appreciate honoring their artistic heroes, but there’s no way Finland can have a denomination high enough to warrant Sibelius’ image. They should just name their GDP after him.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: Symphony 4, Movement 1; “The Swan Of Tuonela;” Symphony 5, Movements 1 and 3; Symphony 6; Symphony 7, Movements 1-3; Tapiola
Filed Between: Shudder To Think (50,000 B.C.) and Silverchair (“Tomorrow”)

Here we have three piano pieces, two concertos (which are backed by an orchestra) and one solo piece, from the first third of the 20th century by two of that century’s most respected composers. Each piece has lengthy, incredibly technically demanding sections, and so Argerich is the real star here.

Prokofiev is quickly becoming one of my favorite composers. I loved Alexander Nevsky last spring and, as with that piece, I find his Third Piano Concerto (1921) to be the perfect blend of Romantic and 20th Century music. It has enough of the 19th century to be easily understood and emotionally gripping while including enough 20th century experimentation to be interesting and exciting.

Since Ravel was a French “impressionist” composer, I’ve always just assumed he was Debussy, Part Deux. I may eventually determine that to be the case, but his compositions here distinguish him from his countryman in my mind. The Piano Concerto in G, from 1932, could have been written by Gershwin, with its seamless blending of classical and jazz idioms. One recurring theme is, in fact, a direct quote from Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue from eight years prior, if im not mistaken. Horns wail out themes plaintively only to be swept away by the orchestra and piano. It’s so obvious when you hear it, but so few composers have done it. It is an absolute triumph and, in the present, an almost sad statement of what was missed from the general lack of combination of these schools of music.

Ravel’s other piece here, Gaspard de la Nuit, a setting for a poem by Aloysius Bertrand, is more like Debussy in that each movement paints an impression of some noun: water fairy, gallows, and goblin. There is less harmonic lushness and, as a result, an ultimately unsatisfying aspect to this piece. “Ondine,” the first movement, sounds like riplling reflections of water, but never seems to go far below the surface. I think its most unsoundly blemish, though, is in Argerich’s muddled interpretation: often times the melody seems to get lost in the blur of glissandi and rapid runs on the page.

Conductor Claudio Abbado is to blame for this as well in the piano concerti. I often find his tempi to be far too fast. The third movement of the Prokofiev is marked “Allegro ma non troppo” (quickly, but not too quickly). Abbado’s tempo is, however, definitely “troppo.”

Those flaws are not enough to take away from the technical brilliance displayed by Argerich, nor the compositional beauty of these pieces. On both of those counts, this is an excellent disc.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Non-keepers: Piano Concerto in G Major, Movement Three; Gaspard De La Nuit, “Scarbo”
Filed Between: Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky/Scythian Suite (perf. Linda Finnie, Scottish National Orchestra, cond. Neeme Järvi) and Prong (Force Fed)