Claire de Sévigné
Friday, September 18, 2026
Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
A week ago the FRSO opened its 2026-27 season with Nicholas Collon conducting Szymanowski, Gubaidulina and Prokofiev, which I missed, largely because I didn’t know it was on! That’s what Proms immersion does. This second FR concert opened with Dvořák’s American Suite, typically beautifully crafted, music of charm, pleasantries, deeper feelings, offset by whimsy and whirling exuberance. The second half was cued by the also-exuberant Overture (1953) by another Czech, Martinů, which could be tagged ‘Neo-Baroque’, reminding of how Charpentier’s Te Deum starts, familiar as the signal before an EBU broadcast. Elim Chan ensured that Petrushka bustled in the fairground scenes, whereas, away from public gaze, pathos and seclusion were teased out as part of a lively telling of the tale in which the orchestra, a few brass gaffes aside, entered, tuttis and solos, into Chan’s well-characterised conception, which went right to the ghostly conclusion (i.e. no sign of the ghastly ‘concert ending’).
Unsuk Chin’s concert refashioning from her Alice in Wonderland opera makes for superb theatre, and in Canadian soprano Claire de Sévigné has a fearless and charismatic advocate, every syllable of Lewis Carroll’s text wonderfully clear, even at manic speed, entering totally into a madcap world, singing/speaking, savouring the whole caboodle, Chin’s orchestration (including harmonica, harpsichord, and plentiful percussion) creating a surreal atmosphere, so maybe me thinking that the first measures as being a cousin to Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges isn’t far off the mark, the twenty-five minutes a melee of fantastical adventures.
- Antonín Dvořák: American Suite
- Unsuk Chin: “Puzzles and Games” from Alice in Wonderland
- Bohuslav Martinů: Overture
- Igor Stravinsky: Petrushka (1947 version)