Performer: Oslo Philharmonic Choir

Music by the unhappy couple precedes a bombastic rendition of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass by the Oslo Philharmonic orchestra and choir under Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

An impressively balanced, but somewhat bloodless Schicksalslied gave way to intoxicating and seductive performances of Scriabin’s Poeme de l’extase and Third Symphony.

Thursday's performance of Haydn's The Creation got out to something of a rough start, but proved a lovely concert by the end.

It is interesting that neither of the 200th anniversaries of Verdi and Wagner have received much attention in Oslo, especially when compared to the frenzy that has been dominating so many concert halls and opera houses all over the world. What is even more interesting is that it has only been the Oslo Philharmonic that has paid any kind of attention to the two composers.

Thursday’s concert in the Oslo Concert House marked the end of an era. It was, along with the concert the following evening, the final concert of Jukka-Pekka Saraste, the orchestra’s principal conductor for the last seven years. Final, as in his final concert as principal conductor: the orchestra isn’t letting go of him that easily.

Pairing Mendelssohn’s Fifth Symphony, the so-called “Reformation Symphony”, and Bruckner’s Third Mass in F minor seemed to me at first a rather novel, but very interesting idea. It was perhaps not the most daring of programmes, but certainly a very interesting one, picking a symphony steeped in Protestant tradition and then a Catholic mass.