Friday, October 24, 2025
Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
Ravel at his tenderest and most-enchanted to begin, the five-movement Mother Goose Suite (the complete score is preferable), somewhat less than magical here, rather matter of fact, objectivity and reserve unfortunate ingredients in this rendition. Following the interval, something much more involving as performed, Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony (revised version, 1851) in an athletic, expressive and vigorous account, well-timed throughout, structurally secure across the whole, the ultimate coda well-judged in terms of pregnant pause and increasing the pace for exhilarating release, although we’d have got there a little sooner if Nicholas Collon had omitted the Finale’s repeat, which always comes across as an awkward return if observed, and the Trio could have flowed a little more. Hard-stick timpani were welcome, less so ‘period’-leaning string timbres (if not excessive, and varied) with antiphonal violins also welcome, basses positioned to the left, not Collon’s usual arrangement (he’s more a violas-outside-right man), which had also been seated thus for the Ravel and for Hans Abrahamsen’s Let me tell you (2013), with Lauren Snouffer replacing Jacquelyn Stucker in music sharing with Paul Griffiths’s eponymous novel. Composed for the Berliner Philharmoniker, the premiere conducted by Andris Nelsons, with Barbara Hannigan, Let me tell you sets only the words given by Shakespeare to Ophelia in Hamlet , “continuing her story” (Snouffer), a score beguiling in its delicacy, bejewelled in the orchestra to create atmosphere and heightened exclamations that paint pictures, tantalisingly coloured. Snouffer said she was pleased to be returning, if unexpectedly, to Abrahamsen’s score. It sounded just-so. She was magnetic. The half-hour flew by.