fri 29/03/2024

LPO/ Vänskä, Royal Festival Hall | reviews, news & interviews

LPO/ Vänskä, Royal Festival Hall

LPO/ Vänskä, Royal Festival Hall

Barenboim may steal the column inches but the Finn steals hearts and minds

Whoever said it was better to journey than to arrive might have been thinking of Sibelius. The arrivals can be pretty spectacular – as here in Osmo Vänskä's tremendous account of the Second Symphony – but the getting there – or not – is what this music is all about. When Vänskä conducts Sibelius he doesn’t just traverse the musical landscape, he inhabits it, breathing it in, feeling its pull, overawed at the threshold of where sound becomes silence and vice versa. He is Sibelius’ eternal Wanderer. Barenboim may have stolen the column inches this week but Vänskä has stolen hearts and minds. Whether or not you have ever experienced his Sibelius – get thee to the two remaining concerts.

Why is it so special? Well, as a Finn himself Vänskä instinctively knows that the two key elements in this music are movement and inertia. You may think this true of all music but in Sibelius the rhythmic imperative, the sense of journeying, of striving, is secondary only to the stillness of isolation. But even when the body is still, the soul journeys on. Moments into his performance of the lean and lucid Third Symphony and Vänskä transfixed us with that realisation. The motoric writing for strings was wonderfully keen and defined – not a lazy articulation from any desk of the London Philharmonic – and then one of those uniquely Sibelian moments of “where are we?” in which Vänskä had us straining to hear anything at all.

Vänskä's Wanderer is wiry and wired and as he leans excitedly into his first desks of strings, close enough to lay hands on the instruments, it is as if he is attempting to transfuse his energy through some weird kind of osmosis. It works. The excitement is extraordinary but so too the effect on the players when he draws back and does nothing. Listen, he seems to be saying, if you can hear it, it’s too loud. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a more hypnotic or soulful account of the middle movement of the Third Symphony. How can music this simple, this modest, be this profound?

In performance the Second Symphony would ideally come before the third: you feel it moving towards the extreme concision of the third, albeit with bigger gestures. Vänskä's thrilling account was more or less defined by his radical approach to its silences. His respect for them was nothing short of reverential and to that end he bravely and defiantly stretched credibility in his measured approach to the craggy upheavals of the second movement. All of which made for a startling contrast with the Vivacissimo of the scherzo. Again Vänskä's instinct for tempo relationships is second to none. This was a storming performance of the Second Symphony but it was a performance of small as well as big revelations: such as Paul Beniston’s first trumpet sounding a kind of plaintive “last post” before the final surge to immortality.

And as if that wasn’t enough for one evening, something equally startling happened between the symphonies – and that came in the shape of Finnish soprano Helena Juntunen. Her choice selection of Sibelius orchestra songs was distinguished by an extraordinary engagement with language and text such as I’ve not heard in a long while. This vibrant lyric voice is both girlish and womanly, innocent and knowing, and possessed of a wonderfully assertive colour in the lower chest register. It’s not a pushed sound but it easily encompasses those dark recesses that Sibelius loves to exploit bringing chilling pay-off lines in songs like “Var det en dröm?” (“Was it a Dream?”) or the soaring “Flicken kom ifran sin älsklings mote” (“The Tryst”).

To hear Juntunen take in the sights and sounds of “Höstkvall” (“Auntumn Evening”) – one of the songs Sibelius himself orchestrated – was to understand how access to this sparest and most penetrating of musical voices is by and large inbred. What a special singer, what a special concert.

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Comments

Well, guys, your passion and enthusiasm drove me along to Vanska on what should have been an evening off. I've had my problems with him in the past and I have to say that the Fifth Symphony last night was horrid (you see I don't have my critical hat on). I don't see that the way he rolls and lurches on the podium connects to the music. He seems to prod or bully individuals rather than draw the whole orchestra in with him. Some very dodgy string liaisions going on, and the big climax of the first movement failed. Some good playing, magical pianissimos, but it didn't hang together for me. And can you believe, some guy several rows in front was both filming with his mobile film and conducting along.

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