SYMPHONY CONCERT, At the City Hall; CPO, conducted by Perry So, soloist Maria Solozobova; HOMAGE TO SIBELIUS: “Finlandia”, Op 28; Violin Concerto D minor, Op 47; Symphony No 2 in D, Op 43. DEON IRISH reviews.
THIS concert, the second of So’s short season, was a tribute to the Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, and marked the 150th anniversary of his birth on December 8, 1865 at Hämeenlinna, some 90 kilometres north of Helsinki.
The evening commenced with what is surely the composer’s best-known and most frequently performed work: the tone poem, Finlandia. It was originally intended as a one of a four movement suite of patriotic pieces, a response of the February Manifesto of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, which effectively abolished the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. The Press Pension Celebration, for which the suite was written, constituted a thinly disguised defence of press freedom.
Sibelius was himself dismissive of the popular success of the work, which he termed a “pretty insignificant piece compared my other works”. Well, So was having none of that at this concert and gave the work the full treatment: snarling brass, soaring winds, and assertive string phrases reasserting deep pride. But tempi were at times almost reckless and the resultant undoubted excitement was achieved at the expense of sure cohesion in the brass chording.
The concerto followed in a performance that was austere – even authoritative; but in which the solo line displayed little loveliness in a uniformly frigid approach.
Playing a 1728 Gagliano which produced an intermittent unwanted vibration on the G string, Solozobova demonstrated a impeccable sense of phrasing and line, with bowing that was beautifully weighted and nigh seamless and a phenomenal tonal projection. Whether intonation was as reliable was, however, questionable.
The outer movements fared best from the approach: the innately metallic writing glittering against a carefully judged accompaniment in which solo orchestral contributions, particularly clarinet and timpani, were a delight.
Less happy was the central Adagio, the one movement where the unyielding product of the cerebral gives way to something approaching the warm. IT starts with a yearning wind phrase in thirds and yields to what some commentators have termed a “Tchaikovskian melancholy”. However, I have always thought this movement more Elgarian in its integration of melodic and harmonic imperatives and its rather diffident personal revelations.
While it does not have the sort of overt emotionalism that Tchaikovsky frequently achieves, it does require a certain timelessness of mood and rich vibrato which offsets the often dark accompaniment in varying degrees of woodiness. I missed that richness in this account; too overtly technical and certainly too passionate.
The concert concluded with the composer’s lovely Second Symphony, a rich confection in the bright key of D major, a work in which might be detected some Dvorak-like orchestrational features. This was a gripping account of a symphony based on tried and trusted structural formulae, but presented in so overlayed a manner as to frequently assume the apparent freedom of fantasy improvisation. I thought So achieved this balance very well, with the steel frames always recognizable for those who would dwell on such; but the decorative and imaginative overlays demanding focus for their sheer loveliness inventive delight.
Distinctive moments included the pizzicato cellos and basses opening the Andante (hard to believe there were but three basses!); the brass chorus at full bore in the opening and final movements; and So’s beautifully judged cut-off chords, sending the full orchestral sonority echoing off into an imagined void.
The solo oboe was sweetly pungent in the trio of the scherzo (taken at breakneck tempo); and the urgency was continued in the finale which could, perhaps, have been served by a more generous allargando into the sheer grandeur of the resolutive major mode conclusion.