RSNO, 12/11/2016

Einar Englund : Suite from "Pojat"
Prokofiev : Piano Concerto No. 3 (Nikolai Lugansky, piano)
Mahler : Symphony No. 1

Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Jon Storgårds

While it's perfectly true that Sibelius is very much the giant in the Finnish musical landscape, there are a few other names that are quite well known to me - Merikanto (father and son), Sallinen, Rautavaara - however, Einar Englund is not one of them.  He appears to have been fairly prolific, with seven symphonies and six concertos to his name, amidst much else.  There are also about twenty film scores, written between 1952 and 1962, of which "Pojat" is one of the last, and the Suite presented tonight was put together by Englund himself.

Questions as to exactly why Jon Storgårds had brought this piece to the programme vanished within minutes of the opening, because in the very first movement, Englund quotes "Frère Jacques" in a lugubrious minor key, a very clear reference to the Mahler symphony that would be played later in the evening.  Apart from a penchant for parodying other's compositions (Englund has a go at Shostakovich's 1st Symphony too, mocking the Russians, in the context of the film's narrative), the music is as accessible as you would expect of film music, expressive of the film's wartime setting, humorous and evocative, and clearly indicative that Englund is a composer worth exploring.

Nikolai Lugansky brought his Prokofiev cycle to a close with the 3rd Piano Concerto, the most popular of the five.  By turns playful or poetic, manic or meditative, watching and hearing Lugansky play had all the tingle of a live wire, enthralling, masterly, wholly absorbing.  I wish I could say the same of the orchestral accompaniment, which had been so good last week, in the 1st and 5th concertos.  Yet tonight, there was something a little blurred around the edges, when Prokofiev demands diamond-sharp precision, and I never got that impression of mutual comprehension between soloist, conductor and orchestra that is a prerequisite of all really great performances.  Lugansky deserved a better showcase for his outstanding talent, and this orchestra is capable of delivering it, but missed the mark tonight, regrettably.

The same slight fuzziness perturbed the first movement of the Mahler 1st Symphony, undercutting the magic of the evocation of Nature, but after that things started to improve.  The second movement's ländler was cheerfully robust, with a nicely swaying second section, while the third movement also managed good contrasts between the funereal "Frère Jacques", the klezmer-inspired intrusions, and the sweet melancholy of the central section.  That section, drawn from the "Songs of a Wayfarer", however, brought up the other issue with this performance, that came through even more strongly in the last movement, which was the sound of the strings.

Again, we had had the example just a few weeks before, when the orchestra, under Søndergård, played "Blumine", which is an out-take, so to speak, from the First Symphony.  On that evening, it was played with a particularly warm lustre to the string tone that was absent tonight, and should have been there in the big lyrical outbursts of the last movement.  That aside, however, the final movement was well paced, and came to an appropriately radiant conclusion.

[Next : 15th November]