I smell an opportunity for the RSNO.
Nothing will come of it because the orchestra is in a period of change on almost every front, with a new wave of executive directors announced last week, the construction of a building adjoining the Royal Concert Hall under way and a major restructuring of the artistic policy and performing priorities set to be implemented next season.
As things stand, we will have to run fast to keep up with the RSNO as the orchestra brings Hollywood into the Royal Concert Hall, heads off to the Borders and gets its kilt on to expand the traditional music strand, as well as running a full-scale classical winter season. All of this means the single statement I have to make this week is spectacularly irrelevant, but I'm going to make it anyway: I think the RSNO has found the Sibelius conductor it has been waiting for.
More than half a century ago, the RSNO, then the SNO, was widely regarded as one of the top Sibelius orchestras with, at its helm, one of the great Sibelius conductors in Alexander Gibson. He had a way with the peculiarly addictive, intoxicating brew that is the music of Finland's greatest composer.
Gibson was special, but he wasn't alone. The BBC SSO had a long association with Sibelius, too, which extended from its early days into the 1980s, when the endearingly eccentric Jerzy Maksymiuk began the long process of dragging that orchestra back from the brink. Later, Osmo Vanska transformed the SSO, technically, into a fighting machine, culminating in a cycle of the symphonies; a second SSO Sibelius cycle followed, with conducting duties split between Vanska, Stefan Solyom, Ilan Volkov and Lief Segerstam.
Well, now the RSNO has another good Sibelius conductor – their principal guest conductor, Thomas Sondergard. When the Dane came back on stage for last Saturday's encore, the wave of high-voltage intensity that swept around the hall as the band got their Sibelian teeth into one of the composer's Historical Scenes was spine-tingling and tangible.
The RSNO badly needs to do a Sibelius cycle, but they have all these other things to do. It'll not happen. But there, I've said it: they have the man for the job.
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