The main work in Thomas Dausgaard’s second BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Prom was Per Nørgård’s extraordinary Third Symphony, receiving its overdue UK premiere more than 40 years after its completion. Nørgård’s output is usually described as combining an evolutionary technique derived from Sibelius with an idiosyncratic serialism rooted in mathematical formulae, all of which gives little indication of his range or power. Written for chorus and orchestra, his Third Symphony is conceived in vast, metaphysical terms. Like the symphonies of Mahler and Scriabin, it interrogates the cosmos in search of its meaning.
It’s also astonishingly gripping, from the opening growl, suggestive of primal matter heaving itself into existence, to the serene final assertion, its text drawn from Rainer Maria Rilke, that the “whole fine tapestry” of the universe is “pre-ordained”. In between, life takes shape and form, and voices stutter to find words in an organic flood of sound, sometimes beautiful, often deeply unnerving. Dausgaard’s commitment was never in doubt. The playing and choral singing – from the London Voices and National Youth Chamber Choir of Great Britain – blended refinement with fierce intensity.
Wagner and Strauss formed the concert’s first half. Like Nørgård’s symphony, the prelude to Parsifal aspires to the visionary, though Dausgaard’s clean account didn’t quite achieve the requisite sublimity. Malin Byström, meanwhile, the soloist in Strauss’s Four Last Songs, took a while to get into her stride, her voice not settling until she reached the second song, September. Her dark, distinctive tone suited the work wonderfully well, though, while Dausgaard teased out Strauss’s orchestral subtleties in an interpretation at once beautiful, rapturous and strikingly sombre.
