Tuija Knihtilä (appearing in Cavalleria rusticana)
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
Maybe the Berlioz was included with Valentine’s Day just around around the corner. Nicholas Collon and his very responsive FRSO conjured a delicate account, inviting the listener to eavesdrop on the doomed lovers during a moonlit tryst, the music increasingly amorous, well-judged even if Collon overdid some accents, yet the effect was echt-Berliozian.
The ambitious (twenty-five-minute) setting by the young Lili Boulanger (who was to remain young) begins in the depths – organ tremolo, tuba, low strings – with SABT chorus suggesting lost souls, the score developing dramatic dimensions, almost cinematic, and afforded operatic intensity here, seconded by Tuija Knihtilä. Maybe Lili would have made an esteemed stage-work and movie music composer.
Collon described Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony as a “battle” (good v. evil, light against dark). Well, not quite in the performance, however well-prepared if falling short in strangeness, martial threat, yet getting better in the second movement with the whimsical fugue that became appositely exhausted to be responded to in quiet reflection before engaging with obliqueness and obsessive details while heading to a too easy victory. In the first movement, the percussionist armed with a side drum had had a oood go at halting the orchestra but needed to be more frenzied, although the envoi was suitably touching from clarinettist Christoffer Sundqvist, as ever, with his wilder moments electrifying the air, as is typical.
Hector Berlioz: Scène d’amour from Romeo et Juliette
Lili Boulanger: Psalm 130 (Du fond de l’abime)
Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 5 Op. 50
Tuija Knihtilä, mezzo-soprano
Helsinki Music Centre Chorus