Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 / En Saga

Hybrid/SACD playable on all compact disc players

"Davis plays with the tempo and pulls things round in order to make his point but, as he is in total control of what he wants, it never gets in the way of his interpretation and we can simply enjoy the music. This is a disk well worth having for the superb performances offered and the insights which Davis brings to the music."
(MusicWeb August 2008)

Sibelius was a symphonic composer. A first-class symphonic composer. And as such he ranks with composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. Anyone declaring otherwise clearly fails to recognize the balancing of emphasis included by Sibelius in his works. The nucleus of his oeuvre is formed by the seven symphonies, the Kullervo Symphony and the symphonic poems. Unlike Mahler, whose aim it was to "create a world" with all the musical means at his disposal, Sibelius considered the symphony to be mainly a bulwark for an inner motivic unity and stringency, as well as a contained sense of logic. In 1943, long after he had fully retired from composing, he wrote the following: "Only very few people in this world understand what I attempt and achieve in my symphonies. Most of them do not have a clue what it is all about." This was certainly written as a reaction to the reception given his works, which engendered enraged and increasingly personal battles among the critics. Sibelius is probably the only composer to be awarded the dubious titles of both "best composer in the world" and "worst composer in the world"…