The BBC Symphony Orchestra first went to Finland in 1956 (with Sir Malcolm Sargent) and returned 40 years later with Vernon Handley. Thus it was a rather unusual pleasure to escape the rigours of the Proms for a few days and become a part of the 150th birthday celebrations for Sibelius in the Finnish city of Lahti.

It was a particular pleasure for me as my very first orchestral job was at the other end of the 150km Lake Päijänne, in the small city of Jyväskylä.

Our first concert was a repeat of our Prom comprising two early works by the Finnish master, Sibelius: En Saga and Kullervo, the latter with the expanded Polytech Male Voice Choir, from Helsinki Aalto University of Engineering, who lent our chief conductor Sakari Oramo one of their splendid graduation hats for this photo...

Finnish is a very phonetic language and the choir's authentic vowel sounds and chiselled consonants really sent shivers down the spine in this gory story, even more so as they all sang from memory. Similarly, the soloists Johanna Rusanen-Kartano and Waltteri Torikka injected huge passion into their tragic roles. Before the interval Sakari had ignited a rollicking performance of En Saga which elicited a text message from Sibelius's great-grandson no less, saying it was the best performance he had ever heard.

After the concert various sections of the local Lahti Symphony Orchestra entertained their Brit counterparts. The Finnish principal double bass apologised to the BBCSO basses saying, 'I'm sorry, if I had known you were all this nice I would have cooked for you in my home!'

The next morning was free so people made plans - some went fishing in one of the many lakes, some went on boat trips, and I managed to squeeze into a car bound for Ainola, Sibelius's house an hour's drive south of Lahti.

I had wanted to go there for 30 years and despite being full of (very well-behaved) Finnish school children, the place oozed charm and character. Funny to think that members of the BBCSO had performed in Sibelius's lounge on that 1956 tour. Very moving, too, to see his writing desk and the bed in which he passed away. The excellent tour guide informed us of the composer's high-maintenance life-style which extended to his not allowing water pipes to be installed, as he didn't want even the noise of running water to disturb his creative process. His daughters too were only allowed to practice their instruments when he was out... I made a mental note to tell that to my children...

 

In the afternoon we rehearsed with the festival director, Okko Kamu. He told us that he last conducted the BBCSO 45 years ago and wondered if anyone remembered! He thanked us for the previous night's Kullervo which, he said, was stunning.

The concert comprised two of Sibelius's best-known works: the Violin Concerto (with Sergey Malov) and the Second Symphony. There is a nice tradition in Finland (also in Japan) of applauding the orchestra until every member has arrived on stage, 'tho I always worry they may be clapped-out by the end. Sergey gave a very intimate reading of the piece and followed it with a movement from Bartók's solo Sonata.

After the interval Okko conducted a beautifully paced and vigorous account of the symphony, ending with a wonderfully rousing coda which reminds me every time of many Finnish flags fluttering. This symphony is particularly special here and my old Finnish desk partner Jukka Hämäläinen informed me afterwards that he wept twice in the concert. Playing both this symphony and Kullervo in this beautiful hall on this, the great man's anniversary year, has been a privilege and something special which I suspect will stay long with all the members of the orchestra. Then it was time to say 'Kiitos' and 'Hei hei', fly home and finish (no pun intended) that other festival we had started in London two months ago..

Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Mozart's Serenade in B flat, K366 ('Gran Partita'), Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier Suite No.1 at the Barbican Hall on Wednesday 21 October at 7.30pm. The concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. Ticket information is here.

• Ainola
• Lahti Sibelius Festival
• BBC Symphony Orchestra

The BBC Symphony Orchestra has been coming to Bad Kissingen practically every summer since 1998. It is an idyllic spa town in the Franconia region of northern Bavaria, where the good burghers of the surrounding areas come to take the waters and the Cure. I must be getting old because although I've been here a dozen times, I increasingly look forward to our visits here. 

Part of the reason is the air of relaxation amid the beautiful gardens, but also the venue, which is stunning. Built in 1913, the oak-panelled Regentenbau seats about 1000 people and has fine, warm acoustics. 
Particularly warm this year, for, like London, 'Bad K' (as we affectionately call the place) is experiencing a scorcher of a heat wave. The opening piece in the first concert  happily reflects this as we start with Grieg's first Peer Gynt suite. Most people like to think of the opening 'Morning mood' as a snow-covered mountain scene, set amidst the Norwegian fjords, yet it actually depicts sunrise in the Sahara desert where the itinerant Peer Gynt has ended up. With the heat around 30 degrees at 8pm, we are undergoing our own desert ordeals as reeds dry out and fingerboards turn into lakes of perspiration. Someone comments that this is good training for the Proms, which will soon be upon us.

Another heroic piece next as the young Israeli pianist Igor Levit bounds on to the stage to tackle Beethoven's mighty 'Emperor' piano concerto. I'm glad I'm not a betting man as I would have lost money on his choice of encore: the recently-deceased Ronald Stevenson's Peter Grimes Fantasy, which Igor took care to explain to the audience in fluent German. The piece ends with him leaning inside the piano and literally plucking a few notes from the opera.

We use the interval to slake thirsts and remove our white jackets, tho' if anything, it is still warmer outside than in. Sometimes, in the face of adverse conditions, an orchestra can pull an exciting performance out of the bag. So it was with Beethoven's 4th Symphony which Sakari Oramo seemed to make fizz from start to finish. The good people of Bad K clamoured for more. Fortunately we had an Elgarian calling card in the form of the overture to his first Wand of Youth Suite. Seldom done these days but full of character and and just enough chutzpah to send the audience away into the balmy air on a high. There is a dinner for all at the beautiful Ratskeller restaurant, a converted Town Hall.

Unusually we have a free day to rehydrate. Some brave the temperatures and play a round of golf, some masochists go on long bike rides. I go in search of a turnip (more on that vegetable later...). At lunch somebody produces a copy of the local paper which has reviewed last night's concert, flatteringly calling it the highlight of the festival.

At 10 o'clock the next morning we find the hall in a state of considerable excitement as 600+ school children have arrived to watch the rehearsal. They are in luck as the ridiculously talented Alina Ibragimova kicks off the rehearsal with a nimble rendition of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. After the break we run through a couple of Mozart arias with the wonderful Korean soprano Sumi Hwang. Then it is time to say farewell to my desk-partner, the turnip-loving Carol Ella (above) who leaves the orchestra after 10 years. Speeches and presentations are made and then another valediction to the director of the festival, Dr Kari Kahl-Wolfsjäger.

The incredible weather continues, soaring to 35 degrees, and I spend the afternoon stripping off clothes to cool down and watching Wimbledon with German commentary. Later at the hall I realise that I have taken off too many clothes as I have no socks. At that precise moment our conductor opens wide his dressing room door and says hello. I seize the moment and ask if he has a spare pair of black socks. He has. Concert saved and attire all in place, we head out into the garden for an orchestra photograph. This is taken by one of our viola players, Nikos Zarb, who is a talented photographer (his pictures usually adorn my Blog posts, this being no exception) to boot!

The Meistersinger overture gets a rousing performance and by the end Wagner has transformed my fingerboard into the River Rhein (I know, that's a different opera..). No such problems for Alina Ibragimova as she breezes effortlessly through the Mendelssohn and delights with a Bach Gavotte encore.

Before the interval Sumi Hwang appears looking radiant in a mint julep dress and sings so beautifully it makes me want to hear her sing the whole of the Magic Flute.

Brahms's Second Symphony is such a sunny piece that it is a perfect choice for such an evening and it really goes down a treat. Sakari whips up a blistering Brahms Hungarian Dance as an encore and we descend on the Ratskeller once more for noch einmal ein Stein. Something tells me we'll be back soon.

The BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra and Sakari Oramo open the 121st season of Henry Wood Promenade Concerts on Friday 17th July. The programme includes music by Nielsen, Mozart, Sibelius, Walton, and the world premiere of Gary Carpenter's Dadaville. 

In the past the BBC Symphony Orchestra's former chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek has conducted a number of Czech operas by Dvořák, Smetana, Janáček and Martinů in highly successful concert performances.

A few years ago we performed Dvořák's The Jacobin which was huge fun for everybody and I remember being surprised to learn that Dvořák had actually written nine others. Yet, surprisingly, his most popular opera, Rusalka, was not staged in London until English National Opera performed it in 1983. The Met in New York waited until 1993 to premiere it and Covent Garden (amazingly) as recently as 2003!

Smetana's jolly The Bartered Bride fared better (reaching London in 1907) and is regularly staged, yet we scarcely hear a semi-quaver of his other eight operas. Part of the problem (as one who has struggled even to pronounced 'Jiří' correctly) is the Czech language: for most people it is very difficult to get your tongue around.

Two weeks ago the BBCSO performed Smetana's third opera, Dalibor. It is a romantic tragedy similar in story to Beethoven's Fidelio. While the story is unlikely (the sister of the murdered Burgrave falls in love with his murderer, Dalibor), the music is wonderfully fluent, and typical of Smetana. Despite the gruesome story, Smetana includes the folk elements that he loved so much ‒ polkas, fanfares and even a March in 3/4 time! But there is much warmth and beauty in the score too.

Notable amongst all of our opera performances has been the uniformly excellent Czech cast, many of whom have positions at the National Opera house in Prague. As Czech is a notoriously difficult language to sing in, and given that composers such as Smetana and Janáček relied heavily on the sound and rhythm of the language in their music, it makes perfect sense to use native speakers. It has always been a privilege to work alongside them.

As usual, Jiří sang along (very quietly) all the way through with the soloists and the BBC Singers, but managed to balance the orchestra perfectly so that we would not overwhelm the singers, sometimes a risk when orchestras come out of the opera theatre pit and accompany casts on stage.

Dalibor drew excellent reviews in the Press and you can listen to the broadcast at 2pm on Thursday 14 May, or for thirty days on the BBC iPlayer.

Na zdravi!

• Dalibor on BBC Radio 3, with cast and synopsis
• About the composer - Smetana
• BBC Symphony Orchestra

 

 

BBC Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Sakari Oramo continues his Nielsen series on Friday the 16^th, with the Third Symphony. It starts with 26 bangs, as Sub-Principal Viola Phil Hall explains in this insider’s guide to the symphonies

Anniversary years often provide a useful opportunity for reviewing a composer's output. In 2015 we have the sesquicentenary of the birth of two of Scandinavia's greatest symphonists: Finland's Jean Sibelius and from Denmark, Carl Nielsen. In our 2014-15 Barbican season the BBCSO has elected to celebrate the six symphonies of Nielsen with chief conductor Sakari Oramo. A canny decision as Sakari has just finished recording them all for the Swedish BIS label with his ‘other’ orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, to much critical acclaim.

One of the nice things about doing a complete symphonic cycle (with the possible exception of those by Beethoven and Brahms) is that new discoveries will be made because you have probably not played them all before.  There are inevitably some that are performed much more than others and often it is the earlier ones that are overlooked in favour of the composer's more mature works.

 

It has been 25 years since we last played Nielsen's first two symphonies. When he wrote his first symphony Nielsen was still a jobbing second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra in Copenhagen. He must have been a brave man (I can't imagine having a big piece of mine performed by critical colleagues!) yet the work was a success. Working on it with Sakari I was struck by some of the piece's novel ideas ‒ unusual use of instruments and key relationships ‒ but more so by how much like the Nielsen we all know and love it sounded. Sure, you can detect other influences (notably Brahms) but the piece already bears his quirky stamp, trademark energy and difficult fugal writing.

Even more so the Second Symphony which positively brims over at the start. As with four of the others, Nielsen gives this symphony a subtitle ‒ The Four Temperaments ‒ and each movement reflects these human moods brilliantly.

The optimistic Third Symphony ‒ Sinfonia Espansiva ‒ (my personal favourite which we will perform on Friday) starts with a bang; well, 26 bangs actually, the same note repeated, before launching into a typically urgent theme. Calm is restored in the bucolic second movement with the unusual inclusion of a wordless soprano and baritone.

The best known and most dramatic is the Fourth, known as The Inextinguishable; it is a continuous ‘tour de force’ relenting only for a brief quasi-Baroque passage in the middle. Written during the First World War, the double timpani ‘battle’ at the end is usually worth the ticket price alone!

Another battle of sorts takes place in the Fifth symphony, this time with the orchestra and a snare drum which seemingly tries to disrupt things in the first movement. The piece is also quite war-like but unusually in just two parts. In the second part the drummer plays in the distance, off-stage, as if defeated by the orchestra. Twenty years ago this led to an embarrassing situation when the BBCSO played it in Munich. The over-zealous usher tried to stop Kevin Nutty playing his drum off-stage saying: ‘You cannot play that here, there is a concert going on!’

The final Nielsen symphony is probably the most difficult and (ironically) sub-titled Simple Symphony! Although he reverts to four movements it is easily his most quirky and contains a movement for just wind and percussion instruments (with no real melody!) and is probably the only symphony ever written to end with a bassoon raspberry!

• Book for Friday's Concert
• BBC Symphony Orchestra
• Sakari Oramo - biography
• Carl Nielsen
• Radio 3 - Discovering Nielsen