A pleasant evening of Finnish music
Conductor led an exciting performance of Sibelius’s Symphony no. 3 in C, op. 52
National Arts Centre Orchestra John Storgards, conductor; Pekka Kuusisto, violin Southam Hall, National Arts Centre Reviewed Thursday at 9 p.m.
Before Jean Sibelius established himself in the public consciousness, a little more than 100 years ago, most music lovers could probably not tell you whether there was such a thing as Finnish music. Today, Sibelius looms so large in the story of 20th-century symphonies that he can’t be ignored, yet how many other Finnish composers can the average listener name offhand? Arvo Pärt doesn’t count, even though his Fratres is included in the National Arts Centre Orchestra’s Finnish Landscapes program this week. Pärt is Estonian.
The program began and ended with Sibelius, though. It opened with Rakastava (The Lover), op. 14. Conductor John Storgards led the orchestra in a sensitive and expert reading of this early work. The second movement could possibly had subtler pianissimi, but on balance the work was given a fair representation.
Next came the Canadian première of Magnus Lindberg’s 2006 Violin Concerto, a challenging piece for the listener as well as the performers.
It’s challenges are not unreasonable, though, and its emotional trajectory is not fundamentally different from that of a more “standard” concerto like the Brahms or Bartók.
Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto has terrific technique and communicates the score well, so well that he got a standing ovation and rewarded it with an encore based on Finnish folk material. He produced a nice dry sound, ideal for the concerto and encore alike.
Arvo Pärt’s Fratres is probably his best-known work, perhaps because he has set it to many different orchestrations over the years. To speak plainly, this piece is not on my desert-island list, nor is anything by this composer. Well, maybe Spiegel im Spiegel. Having said that, I must add that Thursday’s performance was lovely and made as good a case for the score as can be made.
The Symphony no. 3 in C, op. 52 is often said to be the work in which Sibelius became fully Sibelius, that is in which his voice no longer had the accents of Tchaikovsky and other Romantics. It is also said to be the least familiar of his seven symphonies, much as the Brahms Third is the least popular of that composer’s four. Sometimes there’s no accounting for taste.
Conductor Storgards led an exciting performance in which the colours and contrapuntal elements of the score were expertly managed.
Only once, in the first movement, did the upper and lower strings fail to achieve the proper balance to avoid a minor muddle. Storgards seemed to the manner born, as I suppose he was.