Saturday, October 19, 2024
Orchestra Hall, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center, Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan
The Peter Grimes Interludes were atmospheric and suitably edgy, and very well played (one brief moment of high-violin uncertainty aside), although more from timpani and bass drum in ‘Storm’ would have been welcome; otherwise Tabita Berglund (DSO principal guest) was on-target with this vividly descriptive music that doesn’t necessarily need the opera from which it comes. Following intermission, Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Legends (I prefer Legends to the Suite re-name, and, with due respect to the composer’s changes, I also prefer the two longest movements respectively first and second, as originally planned). Nevertheless, even with ‘Swan of Tuonela’ now second (there’s a YT video from May last year, Saraste conducting, that has ‘Swan’ third), Berglund led an impressive account of the whole, of thought-through length and line well-balanced with graphic imagery: symphony and scenery as-one. The ‘Swan’ itself was appropriately bleak, death-song and all, with a poetic cor anglais (English horn) solo from Monica Fosnaugh, the set rounded by a thrilling ‘Lemminkäinen’s Return’, he now on a horse (not spared) rather than arriving by boat to the island that is Saari, lured there by its maidens.
The half-hour Time and Tides (given its US premiere the morning before by these artists) is a geographical tour of folksongs (England, Finland, Scotland, America), each attractive initially if becoming rather swamped by Anna Clyne’s elaborations (the chamber orchestration is well-judged though), however tailor-made for Pekka Kuusisto’s very particular tone and style (and singing, not something he should pursue too often!) and he added another Scottish ditty as a faster and faster encore.
https://www.colinscolumn.com/detroit-symphony-orchestra-tabita-berglund-conducts-anna-thorvaldsdottirs-metacosmos-and-sibeliuss-first-symphony-with-edgar-moreau-playing-prokofievs-symphony-concerto-for-cello-orchestra/
Ah, I think I prefer the moody guy by the ‘No Waiting’ sign in your first link, Col!
I was alerted by a reader, but what happened there I know not! The photo is familiar if not seen for a while, not in the last few hours.
For those in the dark, the “moody guy” is Colin Davis, at least a Sibelian.
London hosts the Legends in January, always a welcome event to local audiences.
I remember the Prom premiere of Lemminkainen and the Maidens of the Island (Saari as was) in 1965. Sorry it just brings back a memory of one of my early live Sibelius performances. Sargent was a fine exponent although critics were snooty. Today one esteemed critic rates the whole work up with all the symphonies.
Times change.
Good gosh. Didn’t recognise the brilliant young Colin Davis in that photo from his rebel-subversive days. Edward, I agree with you about Sargent’s Sibelius. No-one I’ve heard on record better judges and paces that transition towards the end of the first movement of Symphony 5 (BBCSO, EMI 1958) – a passage which more than one conductor has told me is treacherous, so hard to pace perfectly. Another Brit who ‘got’ Sibelius on record was Boult. I relish his 1956 recordings of tone poems, first issued by – I think – Pye? Vanguard? Last available in very good transfers on two Omega CDs. En Saga and Tapiola – Boult with his pants on fire! I wonder what commercial recordings of him conducting the symphonies would have been like. We’ll never know. Does anyone know of/have any ‘live’ recordings? All I’m aware of is a grand and spacious Symphony no. 7 with the RPO at the Festival Hall in 1963 (on a BBC Legends CD and YouTube…not a Prom as a YouTube commentator states).