BBC Proms 2015: BBC Scottish SO/Volkov, review – Menacingly slow but truly exciting

There was much to admire during this celebration of Jean Sibelius's 150th birthday, says Nick Kimberley
Nick Kimberley17 August 2015

Jean Sibelius, born 1865, died 1957: a long life, yet his final 30 years were almost barren of creative output. Nevertheless, his seven symphonies, spanning the quarter-century to 1924, are among the 20th century’s finest, and, played in order, are the focal point for the Proms’ celebration of his 150th birthday: three concerts on consecutive days, three conductors, two orchestras.

Last night, Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performed Symphonies 3 and 4, plus the Violin Concerto. The Third is open-air music, setting out as if on an cross-country hike. Volkov caught the momentum and excitement, but also the sense of menacing neurosis in the way that small, repeating melodic cells generate the large-scale structure. In the Violin Concerto, Julian Rachlin was an unusually inward-looking soloist, his sound small but commanding. Volkov proved equally attentive to dynamic detail.

In the Fourth Symphony, so elongated is the sense of time passing that it apparently operates on a geological scale. Volkov shaped it beautifully, allowing the symphonic shape to grow organically from the low moan of bassoon and double-basses that set it in motion. Even the fast-moving final movement seemed to bubble up from somewhere deep and distant.

We also got the premiere of Michael Finnissy’s Janne, its title Sibelius’s childhood first name. An engaging entr’acte, it alternated sorrowful instrumental “songs” with more abstract symphonic passages. Its wittily inconclusive ending was its most clearly Sibelian moment.

The BBC Proms run until September 12 (0845 401 5040, bbc.co.uk/proms)

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