Sibelius Symphonies

Newbee,

Thank you for your suggestion regarding Bantock's Hebridean Symphony. To be honest with you, I have difficulty to approach 20 century music.

Happy Listening!

Otto

Surprised that no one mentioned the Sergstam with the Danish SO...Sergstam did his best with the limitations of the Danish, would prefer if he recorded the set with the great Helsinki orchestra. The recordings are good, but i may have to recommend the Sanderling. The Berlin, not my favorite orchestra, but certainly out does the modest Danish. Sergstam is a great conductor for bringing out nuances in all his Sibelius. But the legendary Barbirolli possibly comes through as the set to own. But i love Sibelius ...so i have 3 sets. Do not buy Davis with the London SO. The worst in all catalogue. Davis with the Boston is very interesting on 2 and 5.(or 7?) BYW for SYM. #1, Rozdenvesky with the London (album) is excellent. Kamu with the Helsinki (album) is very good. DG did not release all the Kamu's Sibelius recordings on CD.??? The one to own on SYM #1 is the Stokowski and the National. Of all classical legendary recordings (i'll soon start a thread on this list) this recording is just superb. What a genius Stokowski!

Check out Paavo Berglund complete sibielius symph. with the chamber orch. of Europe on the FINLANDIA label. Very good readings by top notch players. And very well recorded by Tony Faulkners and Onno ?( whats his lastname).

Best complete set for me is Maazel/London, recorded in 1960's this is a young Maazel giving us a set for the ages with great sound that betters most new modern recordings.

I own the critics darlings like Ashkenazy, Davis, Karajan, Berglund etc but much prefer the Maazel set even though there are few other Maazel works I really like. Other sets I prefer are Bernstein/Sony and Gibson/Chandos.....three great sets there that are not normally touted heavily by critics.

For Karajan much prefer his EMI recordings to critics favorite DG versions, the Barbirolli/Chesky 2nd is magnificent and essential. The Szell/Phillips 50 2nd is very good also but Barbirolli mentioned is a touch better.

Have not heard the Vanska/BIS set yet.....the Kamu 1,2,3 performances contained on DG Trio CD are well worth getting although sound is not great. The Neemi Jarvi and Mariss Jansons performances are very good buy not quite elite status, still preferred to Ashkenazy, Davis etc.

Since this thread has been revived, I'll add one more performance I've been enjoying very much recently: not one of his symphonies, but Finlandia as performed by Mackerras and the London Proms Orchestra on RCA LSC 2336 (the Classic Records 45 r.p.m. reissue is very good, the engineering by Kenneth Wilkinson is superb).
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