Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
The ambition alone of pairing these two works – Symphonies by name if not in nature – is noteworthy in itself. Even more laudable was the excellent performances, thoroughly prepared and ready to roll, neither work regular enough to just ‘go with it’, although Hannu Lintu pulled back last-second from starting the Szymanowski (I assume he heard a stray mobile ringing or some other unwanted noise), waited awhile, then came the mysterious first sounds of nocturnal musing, completed in 1916, setting words by thirteenth-century Persian mystic Rumi as translated into Polish for the native composer to entice ears and senses with sensual music of shifting harmonies and colours, exotic and spectral, with climaxes strategically placed, the latter fully appreciated by Lintu who made the final one seismic and overwhelming (the heavens stormed) before the music returns to darkness, here after twenty-seven minutes during which the chorus seemed to have no linguistic or executional issues, and the FRSO (and its first-desk players) was totally attuned to Szymanowski’s elaborate night-dictated designs – suggestive of stars and fireflies – with Mihails Čuļpajevs the ideal heroic Slavic tenor.
Liszt’s A Faust Symphony in Three Character Sketches after Goethe – Faust, Gretchen, Mephistopheles – is an expansive opus with strong ideas, although Liszt exhausts them through repetition if transformations. Nevertheless, Lintu respected Liszt’s intentions (and therefore didn’t disguise the work’s weaknesses) capturing Faust’s lonely thoughts, volatility, momentum (while avoiding being hard-driven) and reflection, the cyclical motto idea suitably majestic at first, with one of its reappearances here being a sensitive sotto voce trumpet solo. The FRSO played ‘Gretchen’ most beautifully, not least the opening oboe underpinned by a viola, to portray a fair maid, then ‘Mephistopheles’ rides in, musically trite if devilishly effective, leaving the ‘Chorus mysticus’, setting Goethe’s German for tenor and male chorus, building to a powerful conclusion with a tremendous timpani roll, the organ audible however; after seventy-five minutes, Liszt’s flawed if fascinating Faustian creation was over.
This programme is played again this evening at the same address..