Search - Sibelius, Collins, Royal Po :: Popular Sibelius: Tone Poems

Benchmark performances!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 10/08/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I knew about this famous conductor on a Sunday evening of March 1985 with a striking and fulminating performance of the Second Symphony. Since that moment I loved this version, I was engaged by the inner vision of Collins around Sibelius. He expresses precisely the epic sense and strong musicality far from those so well know hyper romantic approach that not only the basic structure of his works, but besides drawn badly and distort the strength and wide sense of the span of this beloved Finland 's supreme musical Ambassador.



This album finds in Finland one of the best versions ever recorded. Karelia Suite Op. 11 is played with such nostalgic flavor that seems to suggest a certain irony, specially in its first movement loaded of martial rhythm. The Ballade is permeated of mythic aureole, a lyricism out of this world



His swan of Tuonela remains as a supreme musical achievement. I have never heard another performance that equals it in what to intensity , poetic ardor an expressive rapture concerns.



En Saga is superbly played. Collins had this invisible instinct beneath the score that allowed him to extract the essential melodic nucleus.



The brief romance Op. 42 is filled with nuance and supreme dignity.



This album, my appreciated reader is one of the most fervent and passionate CD 's ever recorded and constitute by itself a true collector item.



I know it 's hard to get it. My efforts to get all the recorded material was crowned during an

untiring search, patient wait in a period of six long years: Amazon U.K, Amazon and other mechanisms, this volume, the Fourth Symphony and the Second I could get them in 1995 in New York. If you can not get them new, then go for some used items, you deserve to have these treasures.



The Third Symphony , being incapable to get it in format CD , I had to make a transfer LP-CD.



Go for these my kind reader. It will be a rewarding experience.

"