FInnish duo breathe new life into the music of fellow Finn Sibelius

1 week ago 11

By Peter McCallum

April 27, 2024 — 7.56pm

CLASSICAL MUSIC
Osmo Vanska conducts the euphony of Sibelius.
Sydney Symphony Orchestra.★★★★½
Opera House Concert Hall, April 24.
Reviewed by Peter McCallum.

Finnish soprano Helena Juntunen began the archetypal bracket of orchestral songs by her large compatriot Sibelius with a haunting dependable of arresting spot earlier moving into a quieter communicative veiled successful mists and elusive strangeness.

Finnish soprano Helena Juntunen and conductor Osmo Vanska with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

None of these songs had antecedently been performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and she and conductor Osmo Vanska introduced them with vividness and care, capturing some the breadth of Romantic motion that Sibelius inherited from the European euphony of his clip and the distinctive modal turns and rhapsodic bushed from which helium created his idiosyncratic philharmonic language.

The archetypal song, Autumn Evening expresses solitary thoughts earlier the vastness of nature. The 2nd song, Baron Magnus, had lighter enigmatic humour successful a line-by-line folksong-like structure.

Juntunen tapered each operation with suggestive coyness arsenic the substance told of a duke lured into watery depths by a sea-nymph earlier waking, unharmed connected a slope of violets.

The 3rd dwelt whimsically connected the swift transition of clip earlier opening retired connected the telephone successful the last enactment to clasp fleeting youth.

Framing this bracket were 2 purely orchestral works. Pohjola’s Daughter, Opus 49 began with a chant-like thought successful shady depths, moving done striving and strife to a tousling climax connected brass arsenic though buffeted by fate.

The Bard, Opus 64 prefigures the pared backmost benignant of Sibelius’s aboriginal works successful which his connection darkened and extraneous embellishment was discarded. Gnomic phrases from the orchestra acceptable astir spacious declamatory harp chords tinged with dissonance.

Juntunen returned for the past opus Luonotar which blended the communicative attack of the earlier songs with this newfound terse style. She seared done the orchestra successful tumultuous passages, assuming a luminous vocal prime successful moments of abrupt radiance and dissolving to thing towards the close.

In the 2nd fractional Vanska led the SSO with exacting attraction done Sibelius’s Lemminkainen Suite Opus 22, comprising 4 symphonic poems based connected the Finnish epic the Kalevala.

Vanska drew retired each tiny refinement of orchestral timbre and equilibrium to make involvement successful tiny moments, portion besides shaping the wide architecture to physique breathtaking listener involvement.

The archetypal movement, Lemminkainen and the Maidens of Saari, began with sensuous oboe lines and rustic rhythms earlier gathering towards a climactic infinitesimal with urgent tendency reminiscent of the operation structures of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.

Cor anglais subordinate Alexandre Oguey captured the essence of The Swan of Tuonela successful a dependable of extent and veiled mournfulness. The 3rd poem Lemminkainen successful Tuonela swirled successful eddying textures capturing the unpredictable wildness of nature.

The past question Lemminkainen’s Return was an energised gallop to the close, afloat of fearsome leaps, sinewy strokes and breathless abandon. It is 20 years since Vladimir Ashkenazy’s rhythm of each Sibelius’s symphonies with the SSO, and Vanska has offered present a astir invited accidental to reengage with that composer’s alluring mysteries.

COMEDY
Chris Ryan: Good-O ★★★★
Enmore Theatre, April 25. Until April 28

Comedian Chris Ryan precocious came crossed the enactment of stoic philosopher Epictetus, who counselled readers to situation themselves “only with radical who uplift you.” She had unknowingly been surviving by a precise akin credo; she’s had a “strict nary f***heads policy” since precocious school.

Having archetypal tried stand-up drama successful her precocious 30s, the no-nonsense Ryan is thing of a rarity connected the Australian country arsenic a middle-aged pistillate inactive successful the comparatively aboriginal stages of her career.

Entering the youth-dominated unfastened mic circuit with immoderate beingness acquisition has fixed her a antithetic perspective, and she’s grown into a distinctive, captious voice.
Good-O introduces caller wrinkles into Ryan’s drama arsenic it fleshes retired her jaded worldview.

It’s possibly her astir idiosyncratic enactment yet, digging into her narration with her parents. She aspires to beryllium much similar her father, who responds to rudeness oregon aggression with the sign-off “Good-O’, but much intimately resembles her mother, who shares her inclination towards rage.

She’s tried therapy, thing her Boomer parents wouldn’t countenance, to get to the basal of her discontent. Yet, arsenic her parent helpfully pointed out: “It doesn’t look to person fixed you.”

The differing values crossed generations beryllium fertile comic crushed for Ryan. Now, she marvels, grandparents tin beryllium an involved, nurturing beingness successful their grandchildren’s lives.

Back erstwhile she was a kid, their cognition to her could beryllium summed up as: “You’re a humor relative. I conjecture you tin person a biscuit.”

Ryan has an understated benignant but her penning is crisp and spiky arsenic she winningly turns her ire connected laughing yoga, motivational speakers and Instagram gurus. You consciousness her astir implicit enactment is inactive up of her, but for now, this is simply a trenchant, acutely comic hour, raging against modern malaise but ne'er pretending to person each the answers.

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