Nearly 90 years on, Nielsen's Sixth and last symphony, the misleadingly subtitled Sinfonia Semplice, continues to tease. A downright peculiar piece, it has a hauntingly mischievous quality that stays in the mind. Its first and third movements, earnestly cerebral in the busy opening, weightily eloquent in the Adagio, may seem to be from a musical place you recognise. But the second and fourth movements cock a snook at expectation. The brief Humoreske is one of the most quirkily scored pieces in the repertoire, with winds and percussion achieving an improbable lightness. The theme and variations of the last movement constantly disappears round new corners, right up to its final bars.
In two previous live hearings, the Sixth has, for me, failed to exceed the sum of its idiosyncratic parts. But in Osmo Vänskä's experienced hands, there was little danger of that. Vänskä gripped every detail while never letting the pulse slacken. The LPO responded with obvious enthusiasm. Questions about the work remain, but if anyone has a plausible answer to them, then surely it's Vänskä.
There was nothing uncertain about the first half of the programme. Vänskä's Sibelius always comes with a guarantee of vernacular authenticity, which was evident from the first bars of the Third Symphony. This is the first of his symphonies in which Sibelius settles into his own distinct sound. Vänskä and the LPO revelled in its dark rhythmic pulsing, conjuring a performance full of meticulously detailed accents but also with great spaciousness. It was thrillingly paced. In between the two Nordic symphonies, Christian Tetzlaff played Mozart's G major Violin Concerto K216 with a dazzlingly premeditated sweep, while always taking care to underline the work's grainier tonal twists and turns. And when he had done what he came to do, Tetzlaff even opened his eyes.
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