Late Sibelius

A brief diversion from taking the next one on the shelf to consider the newly issued cover disk from BBC Music magazine. This one features the final two symphonies of Sibelius, Nos 6 and 7, plus the tone poem En Saga. The conductor in the symphonies is the visually striking Finn and Sibelius specialist Leif Segerstam with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. En Saga is conducted by Stefan Solyom. As it happens, I don't have any other recordings of these particular symphonies, although I do have En Saga on a recording of tone poems by the Lahti forces under Vanska. What strikes me about listening to this disk is the absence of the expected cold northern feel to the pieces. En Saga has an oddly Spanich sounding tinge to me, the sixth symphony is sometimes referred to as Sibelius's pastoral and it has that spring like aspect, while the seventh turned out to be Sibelius's final symphony even though he lived for another thirty years or so. I don't find anything particularly valedictory about it however.