Royal Festival Hall,London
The penultimate concert of Osmo Vänskä’s peerless cycle of Sibelius symphonies with the London Philharmonic swept all before itIt’s six years since Osmo Vänskä final conducted a total cycle of the Sibelius symphonies in London. That was with the London Philharmonic too, and this reprise is following the same chronological four-concert plan. So the third concert paired the fourth and fifth symphonies and, and like the rest of the series,also included a British concerto; here it was Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with Raphael Wallfisch as the disappointingly prosaic soloist.
Yet Vänskä’s peerless Sibelius still sweeps all before it. His interpretations acquire continued to evolve over the years; phrases are more moulded now, or textures more homogenised,while instead of the music being allowed to speak starkly for itself, its course is clearly signposted. But what remains as powerfully impressive as ever is the sense of shape that informs everything – of how every particle in each score contributes to the whole symphonic organism.
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Source: theguardian.com