Sibelius: Symphonies Nos 4 and 5 – review

Naxos really seems to have struck gold with the young Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen, the success of whose first two Sibelius discs for the label with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra prompted them to begin on a cycle of the symphonies. The first disc, containing the First and Third Symphonies appeared three months ago, and the latest one more than maintains the high standard. In many ways, Inkinen is an uncompromisingly direct Sibelius interpreter, willing to trust the composer's wonderful sense of musical architecture and orchestral colour, and simply presenting the music with as little fuss as possible. His account of the Fourth has a raw intensity that seems totally faithful to the spirit of one of Sibelius's most personal and anguished scores, while the Fifth moves with total sureness in a single arc from the opening movements to the final irregular sequence of chords, without a trace of unnecessary rhetoric.