Review: Sibelius suite swan song for Finnish conductor

NZ Herald·

21 Jun, 2015 05:00 PM2 mins to read

Canadian violinist Karen Gomyo won a standing ovation for her Beethoven violin concerto.

Inkinen ends 8-year association with NZSO.

Paying tribute to music director Pietari Inkinen on the last concert of his eight-year association with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppanen brought up his fellow Finn's love of weighty projects.

His quip that after solid cycles of Brahms and Beethoven, we might have been in for all 104 Haydn symphonies drew a burst of laughter from a well-filled town hall.

There was the feeling of a project with the inclusion of all four movements of Sibelius' Lemminkainen Suite; 50 minutes of hardcore Sibelius reminding us that Inkinen and his orchestra made considerable impact overseas with their Naxos recordings of the composer's complete symphonies.

Written four years before Sibelius' historic first symphony, this suite shows that primal forces had not yet been quite harnessed, although the handling of brilliantly orchestrated narrative shows character.

Michael Austin's heart-melting cor anglais solos in The Swan of Tuonela were a predictable highlight, but throughout, the composer's sonic ingenuity came alive through Inkinen's spirited championing.

The standing ovation and tickertape that followed might well have been a response to the particularly glorious homecoming of Sibelius' mythical Nordic hero.

Earlier in the evening, Canadian violinist Karen Gomyo also received a standing ovation for her Beethoven Concerto, but without streamers.

Wellington critics were disappointed with her projection in the Michael Fowler Centre but, in Auckland's acoustically superior town hall, Gomyo's Aurora Stradivarius lived up to its nickname.

With Inkinen laying out a solid architectural base for Beethoven's first movement, Gomyo was free to explore the expansive allegro in fascinating detail, some of it unexpected.

Beethoven's boisterous Finale benefited from Gomyo's gusto and pinpoint accuracy, aptly introduced by her brilliant delivery of one of Nathan Milstein's crackling cadenzas.