The seemingly inexorable decline of commercial recording appears to have been halted if recent recording activity is to be believed. Klaus Mäkelä, 25, whose Sibelius cycle as conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra has just been released, is only the third conductor to be signed exclusively to Decca Classics in 93 years. history, after George Solti in 1948 and Riccardo Chailly in 1978. And what an event! Sibelius’ symphonies are as different from each other as those of Beethoven or Vaughan Williams, creating a unique musical universe and presenting a formidable technical and creative challenge to any conductor. Makela is 25 years old!

In the First Symphony, he wraps a spell of the eerie-sounding clarinet solo on the timpani which stops abruptly, leaving the impression of utter desolation. Mäkelä made the merciless north winds sound like the infernal breaths of Tchaikovsky Francesca from Rimini . From the beginning, he demonstrates this mastery of combining lyricism, nobility and anxiety and, at the very end of the work, a grandeur that is both gloomy and splendid. In the third movement, which is about as “processed” as anything Sibelius has ever written, the beautiful flutes sound like leaves being swept away by a vortex of autumn winds.

In the second, the air of apparent relaxation and brilliant ease transmits the granite force below. The following Scherzo is probably the most mercurial virtuoso movement he ever wrote and these performers are brilliant. The third (with the sixth the least heard and, for some reason, ever recorded by Karajan) emphasizes the classical element with its clarity and simplicity of outline. Here all the substance and the essence of the musical argument is carried out by the excellent strings. I loved the Haydnesque bustle of the first movement.

While the compression of the Third is essentially cheerful, that of the Fourth makes it arguably Sibelius’ most forbidding expression, austere, thrifty and austere. It is the dark night of the composer’s soul and Mäkelä and his forces gaze into the abyss. The only respite comes in the strangely unbalanced Scherzo where a passage in F major feels like sunbeams breaking through a cloud, or green shoots peeking fleetingly through frozen ground, but the gloom resumes with the reprise of the scherzo that lasts every six bars before fading away so elliptical. Mäkelä’s slow movement is elementary, imbued with an omnipresent power but also with sadness. I was impressed with how this performance highlights what must be considered Sibelius’ flirtation with atonality in its hazy, hazy conclusion. The appearance of a glockenspiel, of all things, in the finale adds the final dash of weirdness.

The Fifth, Sibelius’ noblest symphony, finds these performers at their best. I was intrigued to learn that Mäkelä is not a hurried young man: his tempos are unusually, and tellingly, stable. For me, the central movement Andante was the most seductive of the whole canon: a set of rather bucolic variations where the woodwinds are exquisitely smooth in their dialogue.

The Sixth, as enigmatic as the Fourth in its own way, is treated with restraint, moderation and somewhat even-handedness, avoiding grand gestures in Mäkelä’s hands. In the first movement, the whispers of the strings reminded me of the Whispers of the forest by Wagner Siegfried . The Seventh Symphony was once described as a work to be lived rather than written. Hear hear! The range of symphonic experience here is sublime. Mäkelä plays the difference between the three adagios and the parting scherzos, the opening adagio developing into a lofty Parsifal-like climax.

This set, in terms of conducting, playing and recording, is a milestone in the modern interpretation of Sibelius.

Available on Apple Music

Composer: Sibelius
Works: Complete symphonies
Performers: Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Mäkelä
Label: Decca 4852256 (4 CDs)