Ledger, Shostakovich, Sibelius: Jing Zhao (cello), Sydney Symphony, Hannu Lintu (conductor), Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Sydney, 19.04.2007 (TP)

Ledger, Peeling

Shostakovich, Cello Concerto No.1

Sibelius, Lemminkäinen Suite

Finnish conductors seem to be everywhere at the moment.  Many Finns have conducted the Sydney Symphony, from Osmo Vänskä to young gun Mikko Franck.  Hannu Lintu, making his Sydney Symphony debut with this programme, is the latest.  A tall man with a big frame, dark hair and a mischievous grin, he crackled with energy from the moment he stepped out onto the stage.

Peeling, by Australian composer James Ledger, benefited from that energy.  The piece was commissioned for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and premiered in 2004.  The conductor on that occasion was also Lintu, and it was fitting that the same conductor should give Peeling its first Sydney performance.

The title comes from a short story by Peter Carey, but the piece does not follow Carey's narrative.  Instead, Ledger takes the idea of peeling away layers of orchestral texture and sound, and plays with it over the course of a 10 minute tone poem scored for strings, bells and timpani.  The piece starts with a peal of the bells – Ledger's musical pun, not mine.  The harmonics ring out and the strings whimper around them until the principal cello emerges from the bed of sound with a melancholy melody, expressively played by Catherine Hewgill.  The strings are divided and play against each other in contrasting motifs and registers.  The music builds into a throbbing minimalist-sounding phalanx that then breaks down and is peeled away into ghostly glissandi and quiet dissonances.  The orchestra's ensemble was superb throughout this piece, and the sheen of the strings lovely.  Only in the thumping climax did there seem to be a problem of balance, with timpani and bells drowning out the intricate string writing, but this moment was peeled away to reveal, at the last, that haunting cello melody once more.

The performance of Shostakovich's first cello concerto that followed was less impressive.  The soloist was another Sydney debutante, the young Chinese cellist Jing Zhao.  Although she began the first movement with confidence, I found her performance lacking in detail and was not convinced of her empathy for the music.  Having read pianist Susan Tomes' recent article in the Guardian on playing from memory, I wonder if Zhao, in memorising the concerto, sacrificed mastery of the music itself.  She seemed to gloss over much of the detail in the score.  Certainly there was little of the thrust, pointing of phrases and overall biting urgency that distinguish better accounts.

The central slow movement was better, owing in no small part to the profound melancholy evoked by the Sydney strings.  Principal horn Ben Jacks was also in good form, swapping the appropriately coarse swaggering tone he used in the first movement for clear and mournful horn calls.  Zhao played this movement well and with feeling, but when she arrived at the cadenza that bridges the gap between second and third movements, she seemed to lose momentum once more.  The introspection of her opening passages was frustrated by her audibly heavy breathing, and she seemed hesitant in the more rapid passages.  Things improved again in the final movement, which moved along at a sensible rather than an exciting tempo.  Still, the orchestra's ensemble was good, and the final movement's grotesquerie was well captured until the timpani silenced all debate.  Not a bad performance, but gnarled rather frenzied.

No such reservations apply to the performance of Sibelius' Lemminkäinen Suite that followed after interval.  Lintu was very much in his element, guiding the orchestra through the score with big dramatic gestures that were very expressive but which must have been difficult to follow.  Indeed the precision of some entries was a little compromised, but the dramatic sweep of the performance was more than ample compensation.  After a fresh blast from the horns, the Sydney Symphony woodwinds danced gaily like flirtatious maidens in the first movement.  There was plenty of warmth and sweep from the strings too.  The strings shone again in The Swan of Tuonela, which was placed second as per Sibelius' second thoughts rather than third as in his original score.  The chord that rises through the strings from double basses to violins had an ethereal otherworldly sheen, and Alexandre Oguey's cor anglais blended beautifully with Hewgill's cello in depicting the swan itself.  The dramatic third movement bristled with tension and Lemminkäinen's Return closed the concert with triumph and a healthy dose of bombast.

In later life, Sibelius remarked that the Lemminkäinen Suite was worthy to stand as one of his symphonies, an interesting assertion given that the composer never really accorded his earlier Kullervo Symphony the same status.  Hannu Lintu and the Sydney Symphony gave a performance of thrust and cogency that argued the Suite's symphonic credentials without sacrificing the individual glories of each constituent tone poem.

 

Tim Perry