All Sibelius Prom, but different - Pekka Kuusisto, Dausgaard

A very different Prom 20 featuring Jean Sibelius with Pekka Kuusisto, Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.  Not the famous Sibelius Symphony no 5 op 82, but the first version, from 1915, in four movements. The first performance was a success, but Sibelius, ever his own sternest critic, wasn't satisfied and continued to revise it until 1919. During the 1980's and 90's, research into Sibelius's original source materials made it possible to reconstruct a performing version of this early score, based on orchestral parts and notes from the period. The premiere recording was made in 1995 with Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. Over the years, this version has come to be appreciated for its own sake, not just as a novelty, but for its originality. Thomas Dausgaard's approach was convincing, bringing out the exploratory character of the piece, acknowledging that, for Sibelius, the work had a long genesis. Moreover, Dausgaard framed this performance in context, pairing the symphony with the Violin Concerto, and rather more unusually with Finnish folk music and orchestrated versions of folk tunes.   The Prom sold out fast on the strength of the symphony's popularity, (and Kuusisto's charisma) but in many ways it's more interesting to hear how the composer's
creative processes develop.

The first moments of Sibelius' Violin Concerto in D minor op 47 emerged, organically,  from the folk songs that went before  (kantele, harmonium and three voices), Kuusisto's violin singing, as if were the embodiment of some ancient spiritual force. How plaintive it sounded, almost on its own, defining theme with great assurance, as if in defiance of the orchestra until the strings enter en masse.  The many variations of tempo and direction test the soloist, but Kuusisto's fluency showed how well the piece flows The reiterations towards the end of the allegro moderato were so vibrant that the orchestra seemed carried along with its energy. A particularly  moving second movement enhanced the third. Yet again,  Kuusisto managed to balance poise with flamboyance : his feel for Sibelius is deeply intuitive, bringing out the quirky originality which made his music so distinctive.  Kuusisto could not do boring, even if he tried.  A pity that on the broadcast, the announcer broke into hysterics, shouting loudly before the music really ended. Completely destructive. Send this one to cover football.

A set of orchestrated songs based on themes by Sibelius provided a prologue to Sibelius Symphony no 5.  Not "traditional" but tradition adapting modern art music.  In this 1915 version of the symphony, the "stepping impulse" and "rocking impulse" described by Eric Tawaststjerna give thrust to the first movement, this character being retained in the final version, though the details are less defined, the second movemnt, a scherzo, not yet integrated.  On the other hand, this emphasizes the experimental nature of this version, still germinating in the composer's imagination.  The "stepping impulse" makes emotionalas well as musical sense : tiptoes into the unknown, so to speak.  The strong chords that follow all the more expansive and alluring.  When I was a kid, I visualized a tiny figure creeping into strange, dark territory, getting bolder and braver.  Thus is achieved the final movement, the Allegro commodo section sublime "with the wind in its sails", as I used to think. Another flurry of "stepping impulse", Sibelius in full flow, rushing forwards. The Largamente molto section in this version is slightly more tentative but Dausgaard kept the overall thrust, so when its destination is acheived, it felt natural.   

Sibelius Kullervo revitalized : Thomas Dausgaard, BBC SSO, Juntunen, Appl, Lund Chorus

Why did Jean Sibelius suppress Kullervo (Op7, 1892) ?  There are many theories why he didn't allow it to be heard after its initial performances, though he referred to it fondly in private. This new recording, from Hyperion with Thomas Dausgaard conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, soloists Helena Juntunen and Benjamin Appl and the Lund Male Chorus,  is a good new addition to the ever-growing awareness of Kullervo, on recording and in live performance.
Kullervo is a musical act of defiance, written as it was at a time when Finland was  resisting efforts by Russia to curb its freedoms. This adds context to the figure of Kullervo himself, a child born into suffering. One can appreciate Kullervo without knowing the Kalevala, but it does enhance meaning. Runes XXXI to XXXVI give Kullervo's background. He's cruelly mistreated by an uncle who stole his patrimony. He's tortured and sold into slavery. When he meets the maiden, he rapes her because he wants what she represents, yet, raised in cruelty, he doesn't have what we might call "social skills". Dreams of his long-lost mother have kept him going , so when he discovers that the woman he has violated is his sister, he suffers such guilt that he must offer his own life in appeasement.  I've often wondered if Sibelius himself realized how daring Kullervo was and, being a worrier, pulled back, as he might have pulled back from the enormity of his conception for the Eighth? Once, Sibelius performance practice presented the composer in sub-Tchaikovsky terms, which really doesn't do the work justice.  Kullervo resets the balance so we can think ahead to the inventiveness of later Sibelius.

The first modern recording took place in 1970, shortly after the rediscovery of the manuscript, with Paavo Berglund and the Bournemouth Symphony.  For fifteen years, there was no other recording until Berglund's second version, with the Helsinki Philharmonic, a darker re-evaluation.  Over the years, the work has been critically re-edited, (Glenda Dawn Goss for Breitkopf & Härtel), and performance practice greatly enhanced.  Dausgaard's approach with the BBC Scottish Orchestra captures the audacity in the piece. From a hushed opening, the Allegro Moderato grows with ever increasing impatience, as if it were an Overture to an opera, for a quasi-opera this is. One cannot overestimate the impact of Wagner and his"forest murmurs", though even at this early stage in his career, Sibelius was seeking a new sound world. Kullervo comes alive with the rhythms of the Kalevala, with its strange, primitive pulse and shamanistic repetitions. Hence the short, sharp intervals in the brass and winds, and the driving pizzicato in the strings, creating a sense of tense, ritualized movement. Even to our ears accustomed to Stravinsky, Bartók and Janáček, Kullervo still sounds primeval. Yet it was written twenty-one years before The Rite of Spring.   

Dausgaard also emphasizes the sophistication that lies beneath the ostensible rawness. This is not simply folk tale for grand orchestra but an imaginative approach to dynamics. The contrast between emotional extremes and the tight, staccato-like figures creates abstract narrative tension.  It's as if we're hearing Kullervo's nervous heartbeat, pulsating with frustration.  In the second movement "Kullervo's Youth",  the pulse flows strongly, dotted rhythms suggesting forward thrust.  Forceful chords suggest alarm, but the pulse returns, quietly but purposefully.  

The heart of Sibelius Kullervo lies in the long central movement "Kullervo and his Sister".  A magnificent introduction, where Dausgaard and the orchestra make the string lines shiver : given what is to come this is no minor detail.  The Lund Male Chorus enter with sharply focussed attack, their lines intoned with menacing portent : this is incantation as much as song.  "Kullervo, Karlevon poika !" The pulse in the orchestra surges even more powerfully, evoking at once the speed of the sledge and the implacable force of fate.  Quieter moments intensify contrast.  Kullervo (Benjamin Appl) and his sister (Helena Juntunen)  confront each other. Juntunen's lines tremble with palpable frisson, yet her every syllable is clearly defined.  Her soliloquy "En ole sukua suurta, Enkä suurta, enkä pientä" is a tour de force.  Her timbre is at once sensual and tragic, creating the complexity in the character.  Woodwinds suggest the calls of birds, or hunting horns, for the prey here is human. Thrusting staccato surrounds Kullervo - testosterone in  music - yet his lines curl tentatively : beneath his brutishness, Kullervo is also a victim of forces beyond control. Appl's delivery is a bit too heroic, since Kullervo is no hero but a very fractured personality.  Though he sings well, his need to channel Fischer-Dieskau, with whom he worked for a very brief period, increasingly works against interpretation   Voice is not enough : a singer needs to be himself.  
A particularly dramatic "Kullervo goes to Battle",  string lines flying, winds shrill and piercing.  In this movement, one can hear the driving sense of propulsion that Sibelius would later use so effectively.  Again, passages of tenderness, lit by scintillating winds, add a poignant touch : once, Kullervo was meant for better things.  A rousing, exhilarating finale - by seeking death he will at last overcomes shame and find redemption. Thus the return of Chorus in the final movement, intoning solemnly, accompanied by mournful brass. The steady pulse returns, too, though now funereal and hushed.  The movement reaches its final, valedictory climax, the orchestra in full flow, the chorus singing with powerful force. "Loppu ainaki urosta, Koulema kovaosaista." Heard live this can blast you out of your seat.  Dausgaard and the BBC SSO demonstrate what a remarkable work Kullervo can be.

More than Pictures at an Exhibition - Volkov Julian Anderson Liszt

Ilan Volkov photo: Alastair Miles, courtesy Maestro Arts

The Imaginary Museum - Julian Anderson's Piano Concerto at Ilan Volkov's Prom 16 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the most innovative Prom programme so far, and possibly the best performance, too.  Music doesn't exist in a vacuum, but in a continuum. Volkov's eclectic programme showed how visual images and music connect: a cross-fertilization that reflects the panorama of human experience.  Though the Prom was billed "Pictures at an Exhibition" because Mussorgsky sells, the heart of the programme was Franz Liszt';s tone poem From the Cradle to the Grave (Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe).  In April 1881,  Liszt received a drawing from the Hungarian artist Mihály Zichy. Zichy was preparing a book of illustrations tracing the role of music in life, from birth to death and the afterlife, and wished to portray Liszt as the Muse of Music on its title page.  Liszt was delighted. "Celebrated Artist!", he wrote "Your drawing about the Genius of Music is a miraculous symphony! I am trying to set it to music and shall offer it to you".

Though composed as a symphonic poem in one movement, Liszt's From the Cradle to the Grave unfolds in a series of vignettes, like the illustrations in Zichy's volume. The gentle first phase suggests, perhaps, innocence, though there's no obvious lullaby melody.  Gradually  textures develop, the tessitura growing higher until, ornamented by rich, shimmering strings and a trumpet, one might imagine the fullness of time. Then, silence and rarified calm. Although this piece isn't nearly as flamboyant as Liszt's Hamlet S104 from  1858, it's interesting because it's more inward, almost impressionistc in its abstraction. Hamlet, though, is a jolly showpiece full of colour and drama. An excellent opening piece, setting the stage, so to speak, and a counterbalance to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, (orchestrated by Ravel), where each "picture" tells a story.  An ebullient performance, though, nicely detailed. The BBC SSO are an excellent band, and have worked so long with Volkov that orchestra and conductor understand each other well.   

Julian Anderson is a composer whose visual imagination has stimulated and inspired his music for the last 25 years. Think Poetry Nearing Silence,  Imagin'd Corners, The Book of Hours, the Alhambra Fantasy, Eden (sparked off by Brancusi's The Kiss) and even Symphony, which, despite its non-committal title, is vividly graphic, like a fast-flowing mountain stream such as in paintings by Sibelius's friend Axel Gallen-Kallela.  Or, more recently, Incantesimi (at the Proms last year, with its multi-level layers in perpetual orbit, reflecting early machines used to explain the universe.  Indeed, I think Anderson's best work springs from ideas sparked by visual stimuli, as opposed to literary sources. Thebans, for example, though I liked it (review here) isn't at all typical of his work.

The Imagined Museum isn't typical Anderson, either, but it's a successful new departure for a composer who writes more for orchestra than for single instrument, and this is very much a piece where the soloist (Steven Osborne) is alone, in the foreground.

On the Radio 3 broadcast, Anderson explained how moved he was by a B flat which Steven Osborne played at the end of his encore at the Proms last year, the note echoing into the vastness of the Royal Albert Hall.   That note is thus the "found object" that starts this imaginary voyage.  Thus the title of the first of the six sections is "The World is a Window"  tiny single notes, stretch outwards in space, awakening the flute, then other instruments.  Suddenly, the piano strikes off in a new direction, Osborne playing long fast-moving lines, darker sounds in the orchestra suggesting vertiginous depth. Anderson says the idea came from Janáček's study of wells in Hukvaldy.  Thus time the "echo" is the sound of an object hurtling down a well, into inner space. Another transformation and we are once again in the open, the orchestra surguing as if on the high seas, the piano flying over the waves.  The strings introduce a sea change, and the piano once more defines single note patterns against a backdrop of silence. Where are we? Although there's a programme - of sorts - you listen with your mind. In the fluttering figures in the piano line do we hear a bird, or clear water, or winds in an empty desert?   Poetry is often more evocative than prose.  You could listen to Anderson in purely functional ways,  but I think it's rewarding to listen with an inner ear and wonder how the sounds act in relation to each other, processed through the effect that they have on your imagination.