Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
The Tempest – Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s play for soloists, chorus and orchestra JS 182 op. 109 (1925)
Hanne Fischer – Ariel (mezzo); Kari Dahl Nielsen – Juno (mezzo); Fredrik Bjellsäter – Stephano (tenor); Palle Knudsen – Caliban (baritone); Nicolai Elsberg – Trinculo (bass)
Royal Danish Opera Chorus
Royal Danish Orchestra/Okko Kamu
rec. 2021, Opera House, Copenhagen, Denmark
Naxos 8.574419 [65]
Leif Segerstam made six discs of Sibelius’ theatre music at Turku for Naxos. They form a signal addition to the Sibelius canon – not that Segerstam, a prodigiously prolific composer-conductor restricted himself to his Finnish forebear; he also recorded, to great effect, at Turku that Cinderella shelf among LvB’s works, Beethoven’s incidental music (review ~ review).
When Segerstam’s Sibelius set came out, mixing theatre and occasional orchestral music, the absent wraith was Sibelius’ music for The Tempest. That gap in the Naxos line-up is now plugged but by a different conductor and by another Scandinavian nation’s forces. Sibelius’s Tempest music was commissioned by Danish theatre luminary Johannes Poulsen in 1925. Poulsen had in 1918 staged Adam Oehlenschlager’s Aladdin with music by Carl Nielsen and staging by illustrator par excellence, the wondrous Kay Nielsen. The symmetry of having Danish forces now stepping forward is not lost on us. It is all the more to be prized being under the baton of Okko Kamu, that senior statesmen among Finnish musicians. As a reflection of this, Kamu’s beaming – not just smiling – photograph appears in the Naxos booklet.
Inevitably, this is a collection of miniatures – some only a breath or two long – but even as a thing of shreds and patches, this asserts itself in music of strange eminence. After a slightly glutinous Overture (try Boult on Somm to hear how well it can go), having found his sea-legs, Kamu paints an aureate picture of Miranda slumbering. A harp and harmonium add colour. Across this disc there are four, minute impressions of Ariel flying in and out. These are amongst the most agreeably strange of Sibelius’ creations and the little spark that enlivens them has its origins in the Overture, sometimes termed Prelude. When Ariel, in Act V, brings the foes to Prospero’s high table, the music again reaches into the unknown regions – perhaps the very worlds that would have been explored in his Eighth Symphony had we been vouchsafed that experience. The penultimate track on the CD is the Cortege. This is a triumphant tempest but keeps veering into chivalric extroversion from experimental shades and tones.
The Chorus of the Winds comes complete with vocalising choral decoration. The all-strings Interlude for Act II draws on Sibelius’ Karelia Suite and Rakastava as does the lullabying romance of the Miranda Interlude, the buoyant Ariel’s Dance – complete with tambourine – and the melodrama, Iris. Iberian overtones also suffuse Where the Bee Sucks in Act V. The familiar Dance of the Naiads and the ‘handkerchief dance’ that is Dance of the Harvesters makes a nice contrast with Spirits – dogs which dances with pointillistic woodwind and strings lofted by gossamer wings.
The overture at the start of Act V sings of a total surrender to delight; likewise the treasure that is the second version of Miranda is lulled into slumber. The Oak Tree loops the melancholy loop and its rock-swaying backdrop take sit place in the queue to convict Sibelius as the masterly ultima Thule experimenter. Stamping “big boots” signal Caliban ‘s interlude but this is also laced with some final sweetness. The Dance of the shapes in Scene 6 is a tartly punctuated cortège. It’s all very inventive and memorable, as is the following harp figured Melodrama – Aria. Standing between the two worlds of pioneering new ground and Karelian jauntiness is The shapes dance out (ballet). The Rainbow in Act IV starts in sombre gloom but the clouds part.
Act IV scene 7 has a watery-coloured Alonso who mourns with colours touched in gently. Come unto these yellow sands has an easy sing-song sway and a summer breeze ‘flavour’ which is followed immediately by Full fathom five sung with operatic ‘chops’ by Hanne Fischer. Ariel’s Third Song (While you here do snoring lie) is a chillier miniature than Full Fathom Five and ends with some irascible farewells from the chorus. Ariel’s fourth song is emphatic but quite short. Stephano’s song is the very archetype of the Scandinavian ‘romans’ – sturdy and here almost Stanfordian. Caliban’s Farewell is activated by some satire and a return to that ‘romans’ element. It’s a sort of John Ireland ballad – something along the lines of Great Things. Flout them scout them is a round but sung by ‘good old boys’ – all halberds and arbalests. Juno song stands out “in the hands of” Kari Dahl Nielsen. It’s a heart-beat away from an abandoned Viennese waltz song – utterly charming. I can imagine this doing well in a mixed recital by Rita Streich, Maria Jeritza or Elizabeth Schwarzkopf (who, by the way, also recorded Sibelius’s Luonnotar for radio).
This has made a, for me, poignant reminiscence of first hearing the whole Tempest music, during my earliest flush of discovery of Sibelius when I encountered it in the form of a BBC Radio 3 broadcast via the EBU, sung in Finnish. That was on 10 March 1975 when the broadcast came from Helsinki’s Finlandia House. The Finnish presenter was, I am told, none other than Erik Tawastjerna and the singers were Taru Valjakka (who later sang Luonnotar for EMI’s Berglund’s Bournemouth EMI cycle) and baritone Usko Viitanen (hot from this conductor’s and this orchestra’s pioneering Kullervo – again for EMI. It was the very same Okku Kamu who conducted on that occasion.
The Naxos booklet is very well laid out and delivers in English and Danish. The sung words are shown in Danish with English translation given in parallel. Valdemar Lønsted wrote the essay and there is an English translation from John Irons.
Rob Barnett
Previous review: Leslie Wright (February 2023)
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