Sibelius - Symphony 2 [Ashkenazy-Boston Symphony Orchestra]The Russian Pianist and Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy straddles two careers, one as a Pianist, the other Conducting, very much like Daniel Barenboim, conducting seems to take up a greater percentage of his time these days, now approaching his mid-seventies, there's no slowing him down.
Sibelius's Second Symphony is by far and away my favourite, full of great tunes and power, there's a wonderful cohesive whole to the Symphony, the last movement brings all the strands together into a satisfying conclusion, it follows straight after the third movement, which builds it up and up and up, and in a blaze of triumphant glory the fourth movement starts, the strings play the main tune while the dark brass [tuba?] oohm-pah-pah in the background [0:00-0:29], with a nice sharp blaze from the trumpets [0:07+], and an equal dull growl from the lower brass [0:15+], the main theme quickly comes back, with powerful strings [0:47-1:15], this whole section is repeated five minutes later [6:46-7:57], the ending is very satisfying, it has lots of repetition for emphasis, hammering home the main melody, the brass pull out all the stops [11:53-12:13], the violins sing high [12:28-12:40], and the whole orchestra goes from dark to light [12:40+], the trumpets/brass steal in [12:52-13:59], loud but restrained at first, but becoming more glorious, and blazing away in one phenomenal triumphant fanfare! [13:24+], while a final drumroll at the end builds up and up [13:37+], what an ending!, seems like Sibelius used every device and trick in the book to hook us into his soundworld.
Here's the fourth movement being played on YouTube.
