Sibelius Symphonies 5-7 by Maazel

Maazel’s Sibelius: Precision Married to Spirit

When Decca producer Erik Smith decided to pair Lorin Maazel with the Vienna Philharmonic for a Sibelius cycle in the mid-1960s, the skepticism was understandable. The VPO—that most Viennese of ensembles, steeped in Brahms and Bruckner, their strings singing with that particular honeyed glow—tackling the granite and ice of Finnish symphonism? And Maazel, already developing his reputation as a technician more than a poet?

Yet it worked. These performances, reissued here on Eloquence, prove that sometimes the unlikely combination yields the most compelling results.

The Fifth has raised hackles over the years—too fast, some say, clocking in at just over 27 minutes. But speed alone tells you nothing. What matters is whether the architecture holds, whether the great swinging pendulum of this symphony maintains its inexorable momentum. And mostly, it does. The VPO’s brass section—those glorious horns, those burnished trumpets—deliver the heroic pronouncements with a kind of haughty precision that feels entirely right. The strings in the opening movement don’t just play the syncopated figures; they lean into them with a romantic inflection that reminds you this is Sibelius the late-Romantic, not some Nordic modernist.

There’s real attention to dynamic contrast here, those extraordinary shifts from pianissimo mystery to fortissimo assertion that make this symphony so thrilling when done right. The microphone placement captures telling details: the way the woodwinds emerge from the texture in the slow movement, the visceral impact of the timpani. You hear the hall around the orchestra—the Sofiensaal’s warm acoustic adding just enough bloom without obscuring clarity.

Only in the finale’s bell-tolling peroration does something falter. Around 5:45, where the tension should be almost unbearable, there’s a slight dissipation—not a collapse, but a momentary slackening that lets the accumulated energy leak away. It recovers, but the spell breaks.

The Sixth is another matter entirely. This most elusive of Sibelius’s symphonies, with its modal harmonies and its strange inward-turning spirituality, can sound merely pallid in the wrong hands. Maazel and the VPO find its core. Listen to the string sound—moonlight through clouds, someone once said of this work, and here the metaphor holds. The Viennese strings, with their characteristic warmth, might seem wrong for Sibelius, but they bring a tonal beauty that serves the music’s essential lyricism without sacrificing its austerity.

The motoric passages in the first movement have real tautness; the woodwind solos sound genuinely questing, searching for something just beyond reach. The climaxes—and there are climaxes in this most reticent of symphonies—emerge with proper exultation. The release captures micro-details that often disappear: the way a solo flute emerges from the texture, the precise articulation of the lower strings. Erik Smith’s production values shine throughout, that characteristically Decca clarity allowing you to hear into the score.

The Seventh I find less persuasive. It begins almost casually, without the tension that should grip you from the first bars. Yes, Maazel builds an epic scale over the course of this single-movement arch—you can’t deny his architectural sense. The trombone choir sounds magnificent, those great C major pronouncements delivered with memorable color and immediacy. But the tension slackens too often.

Compare this to Mravinsky’s white-hot intensity or even Ormandy’s steadier grip (I heard the Philadelphia/CBS version within hours of this one, and the contrast was telling), and Maazel’s approach feels too relaxed. The music needs to feel inevitable, each section growing organically from what preceded it. Here, despite fine playing and superb sound, the rendition feels more episodic than it should. Some have compared it to Koussevitzky’s legendary BBC recording. I don’t hear that level of inspiration.

The recorded sound throughout shows its age only in occasional tape hiss—more prominent in the earlier sessions from 1963–64 (not included here) than in these 1966 and 1968 dates. Otherwise, the audio holds up remarkably well. The dynamic range is impressive, the tonal balance natural, the sense of orchestral space convincing.

This isn’t a complete Sibelius cycle, of course—just three symphonies from what was apparently a strong traversal of all seven. Based on the evidence here, particularly the Fifth and Sixth, one regrets that the complete set isn’t more readily available. Maazel could be an uneven director, sometimes letting precision overwhelm poetry. But when he got it right, as he does more often than not in these performances, the results had real distinction.

The Sixth alone makes this disc worth having. Add a compelling if controversial Fifth, and you have something valuable despite the less successful Seventh. Not a first choice in any of these works, perhaps—but a very respectable second, and in the Sixth, closer than that.

Richard Dyer