‘Finlandwich’. Review of Philharmonia concert, Thursday 30 September 2010, Royal Festival Hall, London. By James Mullighan.

Even the die-hardest classical music fan – and if you were in the Royal Albert hall over the summer, you’ll know they can die quite hard – feels a little over-intoxicated come early September. Once the triumphant BBC PROMS [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11262698] crashes to its jingoistic culmination, it’s time for a detox, and the great British orchestras to slump down for a rest. The last week of September see the lights snap back on in the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican Centre, Cadogan Hall and beyond. It’s back to school.

A favourite of the top of the season is the opening concert from the Philharmonia, under the baton – and sometimes elegantly baton free hands – of its superstar Finnish Principal Conductor and Artistic Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, still whiffing more than vaguely of glamour, post his tenure at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Salonen is one of Finnish culture’s proudest exports, and one of the finest exponents of that country’s music. And so a Autumn curtain up on a Sibelius double bill, wrapped around an hall-filling programming of Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, played by peripatetic top-line glamour-puss pianist Helene Grimaud, all like some kind of pickled fish flavoured Oreo.

Grimaud wasn’t content with being mere insurance against tricker fare. Her Emporer was superb: engaging, strident, powerful, moving, a reminder that this most beloved of concerti was, in its day, truly, angrily revolutionary, far less a natural extension of Classical sensibility, more a precursor of the arch Romanticism of Rachmaninov, perhaps even also an ancestor of latter 20th Century minimalism. Fascinatingly nuanced, semi-quaver accurate, excitingly virtuosic, Grimaud’s performance was very muscular: in the ending moments she’d palpably spent most of the energy she’d packed, and in the hush before the rollicking 3rd movement coda, I could hear some middle register strings slightly out of tune – even the piano was tired.

Sibelius’s Finlandia is perennially popular – a nice bouncy showcase, especially for the rather excitable lower brass, who with one quick bark often drowned out all forty or so violins. That’s one of the very few problems with the RFH’s re-engineered acoustic – mid range strings are easily swamped. The Hall is never best than with massed forces playing quietly; but as soon as a couple of trombones, say, step on the gas it all gets somewhat rock in the canoe.

The main order of business was Sibelius’s Lemminkainen, a near hour-long set of tone poems, depicting the decidedly odd travails of the eponymous hero warrior – lands of the dead, dismemberings, wailing sirens, an evil swan: plenty of meat here for musical depiction. The centre two poems are well known, the haunting, hushed, wickedly beautiful Swan of Tuonela especially. Salonen transformed what is too commonly a bath salts listen into something genuinely unsettling.

Unlike some of his more transparent late nineteenth century contemporaries – Dvorak, say – Sibelius takes a little work, often pulling the music he’s unfolding in a different direction from what you’re expecting. That’s a factor, I’m sure, as to why I find him so psychologically interesting – with rhythms and melodies, especially, he’s constantly wrong footing you. Perhaps not being Finnish, or even Nordic, I find myself defining Sibelius by listing comparatives that he resolutely ISN’T – he’s not Mahler, nor Wagner, nor Tchaikovsky, let alone Shostakovich, although it is fans of those who are his core base. No, he is his own icy yet fiery self: repressedly clenched yet frequently astoundingly lush. And having those dichotomies explored by the great Philharmonia in tip top form, led by Salonen who has Sagas coursing in his veins was exhilarating stuff.