Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7; Symphon [SACD]

This is a review of the SACD surround layer of this disc.

I bought the original vinyl release back in 1976 of this recording. Then this recording of Sibelius' Symphony Nos. 5 and 7 was immediately praised as being a great passionate performance by Colin Davis and the Boston Symphony orchestra and the recording was praised as exceptional. Now Pentatone has re-mastered the original master tapes that were recorded in 4 channels including 2 ambient rear channels and have given us a 4 channel surround SACD. Now for the first time you can hear exactly what the original engineers intended us to hear using the best equipment avialable. Analog Tape hiss has been reduced to an almost negligible amount and once the music starts it becomes inaudible.

Colin Davis' interpretation is controlled yet tense and only when called for does he release the full volume of the Boston brass. The recording in SACD surround reveals even more of Boston Symphony Hall's ambiance which was a hallmark of this recording. Also detail and timbre of the instruments, the beautiful shimmer of the strings, as well as the deep guttural sounds of the bass tuba and string basses are revealed much better in this SACD surround version then in the regular CD version that came out in the late 1980's or early 1990's which I also have. SACDs forte is it's ability to reveal the true timbre of instruments because of it ultra high sampling frequency. SACDs also sound much smoother and more realistic to the ear as is the case in this SACD!!! This surround SACD also reveals the space around the orchestra as well as more of the reverberation from Boston's Symphony Hall. Then after you have listened to Symphonies 5 and 7 and you didn't think it could get any better, it does. The Tone Poem, "En Saga" was recorded in 1980 and is an even a better recording technically then the symphonies. This SACD is as good as the best SACDs being released today.

These recordings and performances of Sibelius' Symphonies and tone poems have gone down in the annals of history as one of the greatest performances and recordings of the 20th century and now we have it as close to the original as possible. Thank God for Pentatone!

Pentatone, please, Please, PLEASE re-master the rest of the Sibelius Symphony and Tone poem cycle on SACD, YES, I'm on my hands and knees begging

When Colin Davis recorded the complete Sibelius symphony series with the Boston Symphony back in the early-mid 1970s -- Sibelius: The Complete Symphonies 1 & Sibelius: The Complete Symphonies 2 -- it hit the classical music world with the force of a hurricane. Critics fell all over them selves heaping superlatives onto the set. And I was one of those for whom the set became a desert island choice. Since then Colin Davis has re-recorded the entire set with the London Symphony -- Sibelius: Syphonies Nos.1 - 7, Rakastava Op.14, etc.. I read the glowing reports of that set and acquired it, but found myself comparing it unfavorably with the earlier BSO set. The Boston Symphony was, in my opinion, a much superior orchestra to the 1990s LSO and, further, Philips gave it much more realistic sound. I still hold to that opinion.

What I hadn't realized at the time of its 1970s appearance was that the whole set had been recorded on LP in Philips's quadraphonic process, one in which four audio tracks were included. They issued the set in stereo and also in quadraphonic versions back then. I never owned quadraphonic equipment and thus never heard the multitrack version. Now Pentatone, a company founded by ex-Philips engineers, has reissued this CD from the original set in its four-track version, having converted it to SACD format. And it is an unqualified success. This disc of Symphonies 5 & 7 is, as all of Pentatone's are, a hybrid: it can be played on either plain stereo CD systems or by an SACD system. I've listened to it using both layers and it is superb either way.

The disc also includes what many consider Sibelius's finest non-symphonic orchestral work, 'En Saga', which Davis and the BSO recorded in 1980. It, too, sounds great and offers a convincing traversal of this great score.

I cannot recommend this reissue highly enough and can only hope that the entire set of the symphonies will be so reissued.

Scott Morrison

These are good performances by Davis and the BSO, the virtues of which have been well canvassed in other reviews. On balance, the performance of the 5th is the more memorable, a reading of craggy grandeur. Davis adopts a broadish tempo for the first movement, which he builds up to a very imposing conclusion.

The sound, at least in SACD stereo or standard CD layer, is impressive overall; there is a pleasing tangibility and depth (notice, for example, the lower strings at around the 2 minute mark of the first movement of the 5th). As I do not own the previous remasterings (available on Phillips Duo), I cannot, however, say whether there is a significant improvement in the sound over those remasterings.

A word of caution, however. There is a braying, somewhat unrefined quality to the sound of the trumpets and deep brass in the two Symphonies, bordering on coarseness. This is noticeable towards the conclusion of the 7th (tracks 7 & 8) and, to a lesser degree, towards the conclusion of the first and third movements of the 5th. To what extent this can be attributed to the engineering or to the actual quality or character of the BSO brass in 1975 I do not know, but I did not detect this in En Saga which was recorded 5 years later than the Symphonies.