Whispering larks and wild swans from Pekka Kuusisto and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

United Kingdom BBC Proms 2022 [22] – Prom 52, Debussy, Vaughan Williams, Adès, Sibelius: Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Nicholas Collon (conductor). Royal Albert Hall, London, 26.8.2022. (CS)

Debussy – La mer
Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending
Adès – Märchentänze (UK premiere)
Sibelius – Symphony No.5 in E flat major, Op.82

If you want to fill the Royal Albert Hall to the rafters, then be sure to book Pekka Kuusisto as your soloist.  It was a full house for the Finnish violinist’s Prom with his compatriots, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, under their Chief Conductor Nicholas Collon – the first non-Scandinavian to hold the post.  And, Kuusisto gave more than value for money, performing in both halves of the programme, adding an encore and then slipping back into the Hall to take his place with the rank-and-file first fiddlers in Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony.

As always with Kuusisto, nothing was ‘routine’.  Even that most familiar Classic FM favourite, The Lark Ascending, was given a very personal reading, but one which, however thoughtful and respectful, didn’t quite come off in the Hall – unless you were leaning on the Arena front-rail, I guess.  Noting that the three cadenzas are marked pianissimo and ‘sur la touche’, in a programme book interview Kuusisto remarks that he believes the sound that Vaughan Williams requires is ‘the gentle sound of feathers, wings and wind’, not ‘chirrups and whistles’ (Meredith might have disagreed).  He certainly took the composer’s instructions at their word: the unaccompanied episodes unfolded languorously, the vibrato-less rising wisps seeming not to find shape and form but rather to fade into air, occasional flashes of brightness intermittently illuminating the fragile thread of silvery sound.  The effect was a paradoxical balance of vulnerability and strength.

There are of course cantabile passages too – as Meredith puts it ‘For singing till his heaven fills, ‘’Tis love of earth that he instils.’ – but Kuusisto remained restrained, cool, leaving the horn and clarinet to inject some warmth.  The Allegretto did dance sporadically with both playfulness and rapture, and there were some lovely woodwind solos here.  And, it was good to be made to think again about a work so familiar.  The Lark Ascending has probably never sounded so ‘modern’, barely-there whispers shadowed by a weight and tension as Kuusisto slipped through the arabesques with delicious smoothness and fragility.  The Hall was utterly still and silent – but I wonder how many could really hear every note of this bird’s nostalgic song.

Kuusisto returned after the interval for more folk-inspired music-making, giving the first UK performance of Thomas Adès’s Märchentänze (Dances from Fairytale) which were originally composed for violin and piano in 2020 and orchestrated the following year.  Kuusisto and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, under the composer’s baton, gave the world premiere in Helsinki in October 2021.  If, before the interval, Kuusisto had made the English countryside seem as cool as a Finnish forest, then here he made the folk melodies on which Adès draws seem to sing with a Scandinavian lilt, so natural was the violinist’s expression, so spirited his engagement.

The outer movements, ‘Leggierissimo’ and ‘Swift’, were buoyant and toe-tapping, Adès’s colour-spectrum scintillating as he dresses up his themes in dazzling harmonic garb and ties the rhythms in ever more intricate knots.  Collon’s precision and clarity ensured that the orchestral players found their way through the maze, but there was never any sense of ‘intellectualising’, however ‘clever’ the music is.  Rather there was a sense of magic, of mischief, of spontaneity – of a pub sing-along getting ever more wild and woozy.  Kuusisto’s E-string shone now, dancing with a sharp bite, and double-stops jangled.  The juxtaposition of a stratospheric solo with a Hadean contrabassoon at the end of the first movement was gleefully ludicrous, while the romp home in ‘Swift’ was infectious fun.

The second movement, ‘Giusto, ritmico’, recalled Vaughan Williams’s gentleness and quietude, and beautifully phrased solos by the clarinet and cor anglais were comforting, resting on slightly askew string harmonies and pizzicatos.  But, keeping sentimentality at bay was some banjo-style pizzicato from Kuusisto which ricocheted its way through the orchestral restfulness.  The third movement, ‘A Skylark for Jane’ was originally cast for violin a cappella; in the orchestral version it is a hyperactive collage of birdsong, the musicians imitating the soloist’s melody, interweaving with ever more complexity – sort of RVW with the throttle on the floor.  Folky, flighty, flippant, fantastical – brilliant.

The Finnish musicians opened the concert with a very precise but somewhat underwhelming rendition of Debussy’s La mer.  This symphonic canvas was meticulously painted, but the finely chiselled details constrained the flow.  Collon shaped the textural changes scrupulously and sensitively, and the abundant solos were given space to breathe.  Each instrumental voice contributed its unique timbre to the orchestral tapestry but in the massed climaxes the colours didn’t run into one another.  ‘De l’aube à midi sur la mer’ began with beautiful delicacy but I didn’t sense the latent tension within the gentle dawn waves – this was more sun-kissed Med than mid-Atlantic.  The carefully sculpted gestures didn’t flow with liquid warmth, or, despite some fine horn and brass playing at the close, build to create a dizzying swirl.

‘Jeux de vagues’ was similarly precise, and again the details sparkled, but Debussy asks for rhythms and tempo to be ‘très souple’ and more flexibility and freedom would have conveyed the sea’s capriciousness, though Collon brought the choppy waters to rest with exquisite care.  Wind and sea conversed civilly rather than tumultuously in ‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’.  It was as if Collon had taken the score apart, lovingly cherished every detail, but lost something in the reassembling.  All the notes were there but the majestic power and danger of the sea were missing.

One would expect the Finns to be more at home in Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, and so it proved – even with an Englishman at the helm!  There was a freedom and expansiveness here that had been missing in La mer.  Collon was no less precise but, from the opening horn rise, there was warmth and air, and a sense of fluid movement – of continual development and cohesiveness.  In the first movement the string textures were a preciously formed bed of sound from which the woodwind and brass could rise in finely sculpted gestures, but it was evident that the latent energy would not be contained and a tense bassoon solo and pressing unison strings urged in the first iteration of the horn’s ‘wild swans’ theme.  Those long Sibelian pedals had terrific tension, propelling the ‘waltz’ into something altogether darker which then brightened into a blaze of Eb-major glory.  The Andante mosso was tender and roomy, the pizzicatos clean and fresh, the woodwind wonderfully nasally and warm.  Collon had a good grasp of Sibelius’s extremes of movement and stasis, but that glorious reprise of those soaring swans didn’t quite make its heart-warming and wondrous mark.

We had an encore: Sibelius’s Valse Triste, played with a lovely, tender insouciance.  Kuusisto had also given us more Sibelius: the composer’s Humoresque No.4 for violin and orchestra.  He introduced it by noting that Sibelius’s wife had commented in his obituary that music-making is made out of sorrows.  Wryly remarking that he disagreed with that sentiment ‘most of the time’, Kuusisto added that sometimes it is true.  He dedicated the Humoresque to his mother and brother – violinist, composer and conductor Jaakko Kuusisto – both of whom died earlier this year.  His violin sang with sorrow, but with smiles too.

Claire Seymour