Other than his underwhelming climaxes in No 1, Inkinen hits the mark with all other six. In the finale to No 2, for instance…Inkinen brings a vitality to this long and repetitive shape I haven’t heard from others. It says much of him and the NZSO that this is one of the most consummate versions in a competitive market for Sibelius’s most popular symphony.

It’s the same with his No 3. String detail is crisp even in the difficult viola writing in the first movement. You won’t get a better No 3 on the market than this.

There is an interesting inverse correlation between popularity and greatness in Sibelius, which reaches its peak in No 4, to my mind his greatest work, yet his least popular. How well Inkinen portrays its desolate bleakness… Inkinen turns this into one of Sibelius’s most ominous moments.

Clarity is to the fore, too, in the popular No 5, with crisp woodwind detail and the swaggering positivity of what Donald Tovey called “Thor swinging his hammer” in the finale. The self-effacing No 6, with its pastoral serenity almost hiding its intellectual subtlety, is so modest it sounds chamber orchestra-like much of the time. Inkinen exposes its motivic interrelations well.

No 7’s powerful contraction of thought creates a sense of scale well beyond its 20-minute time frame. Its most sublime section, a chorale two-and-a-half minutes in that starts with divisi eight-part strings, is blossomed out endearingly by Inkinen. I imagine No 7 might be his personal favourite. © 2012 New Zealand Listener Read complete review

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

The account of the Fourth Symphony pays handsome dividends in terms of painstaking preparation and thoughtful observation—one hears the music with clean ears, so to speak. The Tempo largo third movement is particularly impressive in its composure and concentration, the woodwind playing notably refined and eloquent, and if the tidy NZSO strings are lacking something in tonal clout and sheer muscle, they respond with an expressive fervor that is consistently engaging (Inkinen’s sensitive shaping of the long line is another of this stimulating performance’s very real pleasures.)

The finale, too, is splendidly lithe and purposeful, and although its devastating fff apex lacks the last ounce of clinching resolution, Inkinen’s deeply moving handling of the coda makes ample amends, the strings’ ppp tremolandi at fig. W, or 8’42”, distilling a spine-tingling mystery and the closing chords precisely mf dolce as marked in the score.

The reading of the Fifth is very nearly as impressive. Once again, Inkinen sees to it that no detail is fudged, maintaining striking focus and clarity across an intrepidly wide range of dynamic. The first movement’s awesome sense of organic growth is perceptively conveyed in Inkinen’s excitingly taut conception, the hazardous transition into the second half negotiated with seamless aplomb.

Perhaps a touch more charm and artless wonder might not have gone amiss in the middle movement (those gently tripping violins and violas from fig. B or 2’13” strike me as just a little deadpan), and in the finale some may (rightly) crave greater breadth (and nobility) of tone from the horns and trumpets. However, there’s absolutely no playing to the gallery in the symphony’s towering peroration—this is dignified, unforced music making. Note, too, how Inkinen pays heed to the Un pochettino stretto marking on the penultimate page right through to the double bar line (the mighty closing hammer blows for once bringing no loss of momentum.)

To sum up: an involving and thoroughly recommendable pair of performances. The sound is very truthful on the whole (at times the winds loom perhaps a little too closely) and the value for money obvious. Roll on the next installment!

The Performance The Fourth has rare tension and foreboding—Inkinen isn’t afraid to let the silences breathe and the textures have a steely clarify. It’s just a shame he enforces a rallentando on the symphony’s final five chords that warms the narrative and seems to usher in a sudden sentimentality that Sibelius’s writing wholly avoids. The Fifth is structurally impressive; the first movement pivots on the initial ‘flight’ theme heard on legato trumpets (there’s great tension before it and huge release after it) while the moment of ascent in the finale comes off very well. Detail and clarity of counterpoint could, perhaps, have been finer.

The Verdict These are satisfying, well-built performances and the disc raises itself further with the acute atmosphere of its chilling Fourth symphony.

As the principal exporter of a steady stream of distinguished conductors, Finland has much to be proud of. The wonder is that each of these nascent stars makes music in such different ways. Rather than forcibly wrenching Sibelius from his moorings in the Romantic tradition in the manner of Osmo Vanska, Pietrari Inkinen proves a relatively cool, self-effacing guide, eschewing originality for its own sake in the pursuit of sweet-tempered naturalness. You would never guess that this refined, rather intimate interpretation of the Fourth is the product of a 30-year-old. With generally spacious tempi preferred, albeit not as leisurely as Vanska’s in the slow movement, it is the restraint that impresses most. The massed strings can make a surprisingly warm, consoling sound when required, coached no doubt by Inkinen the skilled violinist. Showcasing his ability to elicit taut, expressive playing at low volume levels, the finale is treated more subjectively, spontaneous and fresh from start to finish, the ping of the glockenspiel preferred to the more intrusive alternative sonority of tubular bells.

Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63 certainly reflects Sibelius’ life at the time he wrote it. He had been diagnosed with throat cancer and had to face the prospect of his own mortality at a time when he was searching for a new direction in his music. It’s no mistake that the composer makes striking use in this symphony of musical history’s oldest dissonance, the tritone. It dominates the work, beginning with the sensational dark, growling phrase heard in the cellos, basses, and bassoons at the very opening, rising CDF# E over a hard unison C. Most of the themes involve the tritone. Heard in the collision between A minor and Eflat major as late as the work’s finale, that ancient interval shows it still has the ability to set our nerves on edge!

There is much brooding in the Fourth Symphony on man’s fate in the face of an impassive and indifferent nature, and Inkinen captures this mood beautifully. In no other symphony has Sibelius pared dramatic utterance and gesture down to its barest essentials. Both the Largo movement, which utilizes some material Sibelius originally intended for a dramatic presentation of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven (another potent death symbol!) and the Allegro finale end suddenly, almost in midphrase, as if overcome by exhaustion amid a desolate landscape.

All the more striking by comparison, then, is Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 in Eflat major, Op. 82. The opening movement has its blustery moments, initiating a sense of struggle but with a much more optimistic note than we heard in the Fourth. As a positive inspiration, Sibelius makes an unusual double exposition, combining material that he had originally intended for a scherzo into this opening movement, so that our hearts really leap when this moment occurs! As Inkinen and the NZSO take it, it seems so naturally spontaneous it belies completely the pains this symphony cost the composer: “It is as if God the Father had thrown down in mosaic pieces from heaven’s floor and asked me to put them back as they were.”

The second movement, Andante mosso, quasi allegretto, with its sunny, pastorale mood, seems incredibly simple and charming for this composer. But that sets us up for a whirlwind finale, Allegro molto, beginning with a galloping melody played tremolondo in the strings, giving way gradually to a swaying triple-time motif in the horns said to have been inspired by Sibelius’ hearing the calls of a flight of swans. An unforgettable finale cadence based on six powerful chords, each separated by silence, ends the work. In the present performance, this finalmore....

Review By John J. Puccio ,Classical Candor,February 2011

The Fourth Symphony (1911) of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) is one of the man’s bleaker but more-characterful works. The music always reminds me of a vast, flat, icy plain, maybe in Lapland, brooding in silence. That’s the way young Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen appears to see it, too, carving huge chunks of desolation from the music. It opens with a theme “as harsh as Fate,” as the composer described it, and Inkinen follows through.

The succeeding Allegro molto vivace, which Inkinen takes rather leisurely, brings a note of great serenity to the otherwise dark proceedings, but then it also turns slightly sinister (although never threatening).