Even Benjamin Britten, not one of nature's Sibelians, came in the end to envy the Finnish composer's unerring ability to find "his own sound". That unique sound is nowhere heard to more implacable effect than in Sibelius's 1911 masterpiece, his Fourth Symphony. No living conductor possesses a more direct line to it than his remarkable compatriot Osmo Vänskä.
From the dark and angry rising phrase of the symphony's opening, played by cellos, basses and bassoon alone, through to its abrupt and unresolved ending, the Fourth is shot through with struggle. Some conductors find an overtly heroic stoicism in the symphony, especially when the cellos, the key players, try to propel the orchestra upwards into major-key sunlight at the climax of the slow movement.
Vänskä does not allow that concession. In his hands, the cellos' great effort is unconsummated - a far bleaker vision, which is somehow also more truly heroic. Where others can find a Nordic jauntiness in the final movement, Vänskä highlights only the discords and disintegration.
Vänskä has the precious ability to pick apart a work you think you know well, then reassemble it so that you discover it anew. If that quality was displayed to surest effect in the Sibelius, it was present too in the rare care devoted to Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture at the start of the night. It was also the hallmark of an ill-starred but uncommonly interesting account of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, interrupted by a string break on Lisa Batiashvili's Stradivarius, midway through the opening movement. The pause for repairs inevitably took its toll, but there was no mistaking the fact that Batiashvili is a musician in Vänskä's league. In view of her obvious pregnancy, one hesitates to say that her every phrase was pregnant with feeling, but it is no more than the truth.
