I am grateful to Edward Clark for leaving a Comment on this post, https://www.colinscolumn.com/junes-recording-highlights/, regarding Maurice Abravanel’s Sibelius Cycle, recorded 1977 for Vanguard. Luckily, I have tracked down a complete set on the (American) Musical Concepts label, issued in 2011, and am very pleased to have done so. The sound is good, the transfers first-class, the Utah SO playing fully responsive to Abravanel’s direction, and on the strength of Symphonies Three and Seven he appears to be a sympathetic Sibelius interpreter of distinction and perception; numerous personal touches, not least subtle variations of pace that nevertheless do not compromise the all-important wholeness and inevitability of these scores. I look forward to listening to the other five works, especially Symphony Four. There is something very inviting about Abravanel’s music-making.
Maurice Abravanel’s Utah Sibelius Symphony Cycle.
Well spotted Col.
Perhaps I was just lucky in picking up the Vanguard Classic set but I certainly don’t regret it.
Each symphony from the Russo-Romantic No 1 to the majesty of the last one shows Abravanel to be a true interpreter of the mysteries we hear in this set of wonderful sounds.
The skill is to allow these rather strange sounds to be plausible as music.
We hear superb renditions in all seven challenges set before us.
A master now ready for acceptance as a true interpreter of a range of masters of the classical repertoire. I must try and hear his Tchaikovsky. What I have of his Mahler, the later works, points to pleasures galore.