Sibelius [Symphony] Symphonies - No 4 in A minor, Op 63; No 5 in E flat, Op 82 Iceland Symphony Orchestra / Petri Sakari

Naxos R 8 554377 (69 minutes: DDD)

Another useful instalment in Petri Sakari's likeable Sibelius series for Naxos, featuring communicative playing and decent sound

Here's a spirited pair of performances from the Iceland SO under its intelligent young Finnish chief. In the first and third movements of the Fourth Symphony, slow speeds go hand in hand with a chamber-like concentration and intimacy, and there's an honest, unadorned quality to this music-making to which many will rightly res-pond. True, the Iceland woodwind lack something in characterful profile, and their strings cannot command the sheer breadth of tone of their more glamorous international counterparts. Yet, at at its best - as in the second movement's glowering Doppio piu lento section - Sakari's eagle-eyed, often highly atmospheric interpretation is never less than absorbing. Only in the symphony's final bars do I feel that he loses too much momentum; Sixten Ehrling (see next review), on the other hand, stays strictly in tempo to altogether more unnervingly powerful effect.

As for the Fifth, well, Sakari paces the mighty opening movement very well, its seamlessly or-ganic progress marred only by a marginal loss of grip between figs M and O (at around the 12-minute mark). Again, freshness and enthusiasm are high on the agenda, though at five bars after fig J (or 5'39") eyebrows will be raised by Sakari's curious reluctance to pare down the strings' dynamics in accordance with Sibelius's ppp sempre marking. From deceptively penny-plain beginnings, the central Andante mosso, quasi Allegretto soon acquires plenty of character, and numerous touches readily stir the imagination (try from fig E or 3'54", with its divided viola and cello writing so reminiscent here of The Oceanides). The finale goes admirably, unmannered and exciting, its awesome peroration attaining a genuine nobility. Some will crave more in the way of epic, brazen grandeur for the horns' climactic C major heroics, though (as on Ehrling's set) you can at least hear the double-basses' distinctive spiccato contribution during these bars. The sound throughout is open and true.

A very enjoyable disc on the whole, but if it's this particular coupling you're after and money is no object, then Herbert Blomstedt's classy 1990 pairing with the San Francisco Symphony will, I feel, offer rather more in the way of durable rewards. That said, anyone following Sakari's more-than-handy super-budget cycle needn't hold back.