Sibelius fans gets a Finnish treat with Osmo Vanska and the SSO

Fans of the music of Sibelius were in for a much-anticipated treat when Finnish conductor Osmo Vanska raised his baton.

Osmo Vanska conducting Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the all-Sibelius concert. Picture: Jay Patel (Supplied by the SSO)

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When Vladimir Ashkenazy came here 20 years ago to conduct Jean Sibelius’s seven symphonies the Sydney Symphony Orchestra had sadly neglected the great Finn’s works.

Up until then they had mainly performed the Fifth Symphony, with its blazing brass finale, and the popular Second, but the rest of the cycle had been largely neglected. Ashkenazy’s tenure as chief conductor put an end to that and since then the SSO has given many fine performances of his works under various conductors, so this latest tour under one of the world’s most acclaimed Sibelians and fellow countryman, Osmo Vanska, was much anticipated.

There were no symphonies on the program – concertgoers will have to wait until July when the orchestra takes on the mighty Fifth – but instead a series of works were performed covering diverse periods of the composer’s life, before he stopped composing altogether 30 years before he died in 1957.

Vanska was joined by fellow Finn, soprano Helena Juntunen, who made her Australian debut in 2013 as a 36-year-old singing in Sibelius’s Kullervo with Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting.

Although the orchestral piece Pohjola’s Daughter has been much performed and recorded since its premiere in 1906, it comes as a big surprise that the SSO hasn’t played it for 45 years. Like much of Sibelius it is inspired by Finnish legends and folk influences, but also by nature itself and Finland’s landscape.

It’s a fine piece with a moody solo cello introduction, beautifully performed by newly appointed associate principal Simon Cobcraft, full of glistening woodwind passages and rousing brass flourishes, and with a dramatic episode where the stabbing strings remind one of Bernard Hermann’s notorious Shower Scene music from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

The other, much darker, instrumental work of the first half, The Bard, written around the time Sibelius was suffering from suspected throat cancer, was given its Sydney premiere.

Osmo Vanska is a leading Sibelius specialist. Picture: Jay Patel (Supplied by the SSO)

Energetic and dynamic on the podium, Vanska crouched at times, jabbing the baton beneath knee level, aiming it like a wand at section leaders, unfurling every nuance of music that must run through his veins.

Although she was singing in Swedish as well as Finnish, Juntunen’s glorious soprano voice and dancer-like stage presence ensured that the three short songs that followed were fully understood. We were given the theatre and drama of an autumn night, a lilting tale of a baron who falls in love with a mermaid – beautifully accompanied by harpist Natalie Wong – and a life-affirming dollop of springtime freshness complete with a saucy wink.

But her piece de resistance was a triumphant performance of the demanding Luonnotar (Nature Spirit) which over 10 minutes exploits all the power, expressive range and technical skills of the soloist.

The audience got to see the full range of Vanska’s command of his material in the final work, the four-part Lemminkainen Suite – itself the length and structure of a symphony.

Its best known movement is The Swan of Tuonela, featuring a heart-melting solo from Alexandre Oguey’s cor anglais and Cobcroft’s cello, but before we got to that there was some truly operatic action from the hero of the legends.

Sibelius was still in his 20s when he wrote, and later abandoned, what he planned as an opera. You can hear the influence of Wagner, especially Tristan and Isolde, in the erotic passages of the first part, and there’s a restless excitement in the third movement before Lemminkainen’s triumphant return brings the work, and this concert, to a lively and rousing close.

The concert is repeated at 8pm at Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27.

DETAILS

• CONCERT SSO: Osmo Vanska conducts the music of Sibelius

• WHERE Sydney Opera House

• WHEN April 24, 2024