Prom 42:  Sibelius, Strauss, Bartók Soile Isokoski (soprano), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo (conductor), Royal Albert Hall, 14.08.2006 (AO)

 
In Finnish, Sibelius’s Oceanides is known as Aallottaret, “the spirit of the waves”.  To me, it’s more rewarding, because it focuses on the mysteriousness undercurrents in the music.  Sibelius seems to be creating a vast ocean of sound on different levels.  Throughout, there’s a sense of constant movement, often at different tempi. Sibelius creates flowing, limpid ocean like imagery by deft touches, like an Impressionist or Pointillist painter would do with physical colour.  The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Sakari Oramo, executed the details well, but tonight it seemed a little tame for something that can be quite disturbing. 

Hugh Canning declared Soile isokoski’s recording of Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder with Janowski the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, among the finest he’d ever heard. Yet no one is more inextricably associated with these songs than Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, who made them her own.  It would have been easy for Isokoski to sing them in her usual way, but she is too genuine an artist to rest on laurels.  Ai first I couldn’t understand why she seemed so restrained. Then it struck me, literally as in “erschlossen in Gleiß und Zier” (revealed in glistening splendour). Isokoski was doing something completely different with familiar material.   Lowering her pitch and singing at a slightly slower pace, brought out an elegiac, dignified dimension to the songs as a tribute to Schwarzkopf, who died so recently.  No wonder Isokoski’s “dämmrigen Grüften” were so painfully muffled.   This Frühling definitely referred to a springtime long past.  Schwarzkopf had in her own youth known the Royal Albert Hall well.  Now Isokoski stood on the same platform, using her skill to honour a great singer who appreciated intelligence in art.

Never have the words of Beim Schlafengehen seemed so vivid or so real.  “Und die Seele unbewacht will in freien Flügen schweben”.  (and the soul, unseen, will float above on untrammelled wings)  Isokoksi will perhaps never sing these songs quite this way again, but what she evoked on this evening will live long in my memory.  “Um im Zauberkreis der Nacht tief und tausendfach zu leben” (in the enchanted circle of the night, the soul lives a thousand fold more deeply).  It felt as though we were all being part of a chain of history:  Heine, Eichendorff, Strauss, Schwarzkopf, Isokoski and who knows what new singer, poet or composer who might be listening, thanks to the BBC, wherever they may be in the world? Death is no end, as long as there are artists to keep the tradition fresh. 

Thus Im Abendrot ends with triumph. Isokski’s luminous, glowing tones burned faith into “O weiter!, stille  Friede ! (O vast and silent peace)  “ist dies etwa der Tod ?”.(Is this perchance death?) The orchestra had insights too – the flurries on flute at the end of this last song sounded unusually Sibelian, masterfully bringing the sprit of Sibelius into the Zauberkreis of Lieder history, where he too belongs.   Surprisingly, there was relatively little audience response.  Either they were so moved by the understated sincerity of this tribute, or they were expecting flashy coloratura.  It doesn’t matter, as long as there are enough who understood that the greatest honour one performer can pay a predecessor like Schwarzkopf is to be original and have artistic integrity.

Only a few weeks before his death, Béla Bartók told a friend, “I’d so much like to go home – and for good”. Pairing his Concerto for Orchestra with Strauss’ Last Songs is another example of the BBC’s programming expertise.  In this Concerto, the composer was looking back on a life filled with extreme upheaval.  It starts out with the “Hungarian“ idioms that inspired the composer in his youth and led him towards modernism. Oramo, with his appreciation for new music highlighted the angularity and dissonances.  The trumpets and horns were particularly effective.   Yet Bartók was far too good a composer to stay immersed in mawkish folk adaptation.  America was an inspiration to him, even though he was unhappy for much of the time.   The famous “wide open spaces” in this concerto could refer to the plains of North America as well to Hungary, and there are quotes from Copland Gershwin.  Oramo and the orchestra showed the piece as a cosmopolitan piece, by a composer still open to new ideas despite his terminal illness.  They finished with a wildly rousing version of one of Bartók’s early Romanian dances.

 

Anne Ozorio