A still from the Warner Brothers’ production of Deception (1946) – Claude Rains, Bette Davis, Paul Henreid
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
Vers le silence (2022), written for the Cleveland Orchestra, is a half-hour piece, extravagantly scored yet rooted in darkness, Hans Abrahamsen exploring its mysteries irrespective of how each of the four movements begins (the second is gloriously affirmative). This is the silence caused by Covid, the loss of people, lockdown – affecting – yet, musically, it seemed too similar, the composer (in the audience) unvarying in the way he reverts to the peripheries of silence and the similarities therein. Given Abrahamsen’s orchestral mastery, and this being a high-profile commission, I would like to hear Vers le silence again; and, in fairness, the half-hour didn’t drag.
Brahms Three, which heads to a quiet ending, a sort of silence, was somewhat bland in the outer movements if dynamically aware, and also a little careless in the playing, surprisingly, yet the middle ones bewitched, exquisitely phrased and sounded especially the third-placed Poco allegretto.
Korngold’s C-major, compact Cello Concerto started life in the ‘film noir’ Deception, 1946. In the movie it is played by Paul Henreid’s character, the music realised by Eleanor Aller, principal cellist at Warner Brothers and a member of the superb Hollywood String Quartet (led by her husband Felix Slatkin), the music impassioned and generously melodic, with shadows that are sinister and allegros that are anxious. It was addressed with conviction by Edgar Moreau, finely accompanied, and he took us from the cinema to somewhere sacred with a Bach ‘Sarabande’.
Below, Fred Zlotkin, son of Felix and Eleanor, plays the Korngold, with his brother Leonard Slatkin conducting.