SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW
 

Beethoven and Sibelius: Päivi Nisula (soprano), Hannu Niemelä (baritone), YL Male Voice Choir, Matti Hyökki (Chorus Master), Osmo Vänskä (Conductor), Minnesota Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1.3.2010 (BH)

Beethoven: Große Fuge (Great Fuge) in B-flat Major, Op. 133 (1826; arr. Michael Steinberg)

Sibelius: Kullervo, Symphonic Poem for Singers, Men’s Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 7 (1892)

On Monday night, as the Carnegie Hall audience cheered following Osmo Vänskä’s thrilling performance of Sibelius’s Kullervo with the Minnesota Orchestra, you could feel the electricity mounting as the superb YL Male Voice Chorus remained onstage—yes, for an encore. And what a finale: the rarely done version of Finlandia with men’s chorus, with Vänskä eliciting stirring work from the choir and the orchestra. At least a few in the audience had tears in their eyes—and not just expat Finns, either. It’s been quite the fortnight for Sibelius encores; last month both the New York Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra did Valse Triste, scarcely three days apart. But as effective as each of these was, Vänskä and the Minnesotans, with the help of this first-rate Finnish choir, will probably be recalled the longest.

Perhaps Vänskä programmed the encore to lighten the mood somewhat, after the dark story that is at the heart of Kullervo. The title character suffers his family being killed, and then he is sold into slavery, after which he spots a woman whom he admires—and rapes her. Later he realizes that she is his sister, and kills himself. Written when Sibelius was just 26, the score is as volatile as the events it represents, and musically, an outstanding example of the composer’s early expertise. Fortunately for listeners, it survived the composer’s own purge, after he destroyed many of his early compositions.

Vänskä has recorded this piece, and clearly believes in it from the haunting performance that swept through the hall on Monday. The YL Male Voice Chorus, with some 60 voices, delivered the bleak texts with piercing authority. From their very first note, their focused yet warm sound seemed an ideal choral presence, and astonishingly, they sang the entire piece from memory. Baritone Hannu Niemelä sang the brief episodes for the title character, and soprano Päivi Nisula gave a heartfelt reading of the much longer portions for Kullervo’s sister.

Vocals aside, Sibelius included a number of orchestral passages, such as an impassioned prologue, with the trumpet sailing over tidal waves of strings. Near the end, just before Kullervo dies, the orchestra plunges in again, before the chorus rises up to relate the sad conclusion. The Minnesota instrumentalists delivered a gripping performance, which made me wonder if this is the most underrated major orchestra in the country.

The evening began with a robust, heartily played Große Fuge, arranged by Michael Steinberg (who died just last year) from Beethoven’s string quartet version. It is a tricky piece to pull off, even with just four players—much less with several dozen—but the Minnesota strings dug into the score with noticeable appetite. Vänskä made the most of the well-timed silences in the opening pages, before the fugue leaps in like a thunderclap.

Bruce Hodges