Royal Festival Hall, 31 October 2012
Osmo Vanska is one our finest conductors of Scandinavian music and his wealth of experience was brought into play in this somewhat unbalanced concert. It opened with a delicate and light reading of Sibelius’ Third Symphony. No Nordic depression here, just a series of beautifully crafted images. Osmo Vanska shaped, cajoled and smiled the music into life. The gentle warmth of the Andantino was like a slow circle dance at sunset. If the final movement seemed almost over-playful at first, the strong cello line brought things together and ended the performance with real joy.
What are we to make of Carl Nielsen’s Sixth Symphony? He may have called it simple yet it is anything but. However, the music is totally accessible even when confusing. The Humoreske may sound like a group of music students messing about but the rapid shifts of mood and texture are uncomfortably close to atonalism and even modernism. In the final movement we could be at a Hoffnung Music Festival. And yet there seems to be something far more profound here. It seems as if Nielsen is forcing us to face the reality of our emotional reactions to music. He lures us into a romantic string section only to drop it, almost like Charles Ives, and force us to accept we are being manipulated. Are we so weak-willed that we give in to any emotion thrown at us by a composer? It makes for an exhilarating and challenging half-hour, and one we should investigate more often.
Between these two fine works we heard Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 3 in G major. I feel like asking – why? It was out of step with the rest of the programme and seemed uncomfortably light weight. Maybe part of the problem was the soloist, Christian Tetzlaff. Technically accomplished, his platform demeanour is distracting with its swooping movements and bodily contortions. Luckily I had somebody tall sitting in front of me and I was able to block him out visually for most of the time. The Adagio was the better section and this brought something closer to equanimity, though the dancing returned in the finale. BH