RSNO, 14/5/2022

Musgrave : Song of the Enchanter

Dvořák : Cello Concerto (Torleif Thedéen, cello)

Sibelius : Symphony No. 5

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Tabita Berglund

Thea Musgrave's Song of the Enchanter is a short orchestral piece first performed in 1991, and commissioned to mark the 125th anniversary of Sibelius's birth.  It's inspired by an episode from the Kalevala, and faintly quotes the "swan" theme from the last movement of Sibelius's 5th Symphony.  A high-lying, almost fragile line in the first violins floats like a chill breeze over an increasingly ruffled underlay of rippling, watery arpeggios, and twittering winds.  It was quite atmospheric and very attractive, and certainly a good fit for the Sibelius to be played later in the evening.

In between came Dvořák's unfailingly glorious Cello Concerto, always a joy to hear, the question being how much and how far can any given set of interpreters transcend simple pleasure into something more.  This was not going to be one of those performances, for in the outer movements of the concerto, I felt that the soloist, the Swedish cellist Torleif Thedéen, was not quite connecting emotionally with Berglund and the orchestra.  The second movement, on the other hand, was beautiful, heartfelt and expressive, and something of that returned in the very last pages, but not enough to lift the whole onto another plane.  Thedéen's sound is quite lean, confident and effortless-seeming, but for a cellist using one of Rostropovich's former instruments, he does not often put the heart into it that Rostropovich could, and if there's one thing this concerto calls out for, it's an untrammelled outpouring of emotion.  

Some of that unwelcome reserve may be down to Berglund, because her Sibelius suffered somewhat from the same thing.  As a whole, it was a respectable enough performance, but never quite delivered that extraordinary, life-affirming climax in the last movement, the one that sends you floating out of the concert hall on those swans' beating wings.  The start of the first movement seemed a little diffuse, though it coalesced very successfully into the whirling, wild dance at the end, and the pizzicati throughout the second movement were demonstrative.  However, despite good playing throughout, the final movement never really took off, but stayed constrained, a little too well controlled.  This orchestra knows how to play Sibelius; this wasn't it.

[Next : 18th May]