Odd that Sibelius's fourth symphony seems to have escaped me for my past 55 or so listening years. It appears I (now) have four recordings of the work, but I had pigeon-holed it in my mind as being noisy and rampaging. How wrong can one be? On my new traversal of Sibelius, I listened to the fourth this evening and really took to it (it was reputed to be one of Herbert van Karajan's favourite symphonies). It comes over well with Colin Davis and the LSO in this evening's performance and I am really re-warming to Sibelius; perhaps his time will come again once the managed craze for Gustav Mahler's long and noisy symphonies has faded. Sibelius's seven symphonies are simply better than Mahler's nine.