On Wednesday evening, Sakari Oramo celebrated 100 years of independence of Finland from Russian rule, with – of course – an all Sibelius programme, including a work written for an overtly political occasion, his Press Celebrations Music. Last night, the baton was handed to another Finn, Esa-Pekka Salonen, leading the Philharmonia in a second all-Sibelius show, at a Royal Festival Hall packed with his fellow nationals. The concert opened with the far more famous work that grew out of Press Celebrations Music: Finlandia.
The chords of the opening fanfare are massive. It’s mandatory to nail them in the middle, to make a big impression – otherwise, a pall is cast over the rest of the concert – and I’m glad to say that the Philharmonia’s trombones and tuba did just that: a gorgeous swell into a heavily accented blast, turning into real bombast. Finlandia isn’t the country’s national anthem (although, bizarrely, it was chosen as the anthem of Biafra) but it is still utterly iconic, one of the most nationalist pieces of music you could care to find. For the first half or so, the Philharmonia did it full justice, letting the music speak for itself without overdoing it, with relatively gentle vibrato and a fair level of poise.
From the middle section, however, things began to go slightly awry in a way that characterised the orchestral performance for much of the evening. There was no doubting the energy being put in – and certainly no doubting the fervour coming from Salonen at the podium – but balance was off, with high strings being submerged in a wash of cellos and basses. I could see Salonen cueing and adjusting phrasing, but I didn’t have a sense that he was making adjustments to relative level. There was also a slight hint of timing uncertainty in section entries.
How pianissimo do you dare to go in a 2,500 seat concert hall? The answer, for the first notes of the Violin Concerto, was very soft indeed, almost below the threshold of audibility, both for the strings and then for the entry of soloist Vilde Frang – it was extraordinary to hear such control and it set the scene for Frang to impress greatly throughout the concerto. Any expectations of Nordic ice – Frang is Norwegian – needed to be firmly knocked on the head: she has a highly romantic, “dirty” sound, with more than a touch of the folk fiddler to her timbre. That’s allied to total security of phrasing, however fast the semiquaver runs or however death-defying the leaps from one end of the neck to the other, secure enough that she can add a bit of lilt or even swing to a phrase without a shadow of doubt creeping into the listener that the run isn’t going to end in the right place with millisecond accuracy. And this is a concerto in which the composer throws everything at the soloist (Sibelius himself, although a violinist, would not have been capable of playing it) – double-stops, Bach-like unaccompanied passages, long fast phrases that require hand movements that look quite impossible. And, in the second movement, a beautiful cantabile with which Frang entranced us.
But that security of timing and balance was not matched in the orchestra. Far too often, a section entry would be slightly off the timing of the music that it joined – the timing would be correct on the second and third repeats of the phrase, but slight damage would have been done. And generally good timbre was occasionally spoilt, in particular by a buzzing sound in the third movement. The pattern continued after the interval with Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari, where some good scurrying playing from strings and brass was spoilt by handovers between instruments that didn’t feel smooth enough.
The Lemminkäinen Suite is so full of melody and excitement and so harmonically easy on the ear that I’ve been listening to it on CD for years without realising how devilishly difficult it is rhythmically – something that becomes very obvious in a concert hall when you realise the number of cross-rhythms and the rate at which different fragments are being passed between different instrument groups. The best moments of the evening came from the Philharmonia’s cellos and basses in the second movement, Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, a great sound allied to persuasive phrasing. The Swan of Tuonela also went well, Jill Crowther’s plaintive cor anglais solo gliding smoothly over the underworld’s dark waters. The closing Lemminkäinen’s Return returned to the pattern of the evening, however, the brass fanfares suitably heroic but with the joy of the chase not quite up to the level anticipated.
