Music
BBCSSO/Lintu, City Halls, Glasgow
Kate Molleson
[THREE STARS]
Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu is all clean lines and straight-up delivery. A tall, square-shouldered chap in his late 40s, he conducted this Scandinavian afternoon programme with sweeping arms and a brisk baton, putting plenty of light and air around melodies so that the orchestral sound has a bright, tinkly quality. (Nice serendipity, this Grieg-Sibelius-Stennhammar billing, coming as it did a day after the announcement of Thomas Dausgaard as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's Danish chief conductor-designate. It would seem our City Halls has become a new Nordic outpost.)
Grieg's Peer Gynt burst rowdily into life as Lintu leapt onto the podium, and it was a nice touch to have viola principal Scott Dickinson wandering through the audience playing a hearty Norwegian wedding march, as gutsy as a Hardanger fiddler. The mournful Death of Ase had a lovely silvery-pale intensity; the Hall of the Mountain King was a cool, creepy deadpan.
Sibelius's two sets of Humoresques for Violin and Piano (opp. 87 and 89) are pithy little character pieces, quixotic and light on their feet. Soloist here was the dexterous young American violinist Stefan Jackiw, whose made well-articulated gestures and seemed keen to make a huge sound on his bottom string.
The meat of the programme was the Second Symphony by Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871-1927). The first movement is a chunky tune played low and hearty on violas and cellos - music rooted in the tugging, lolloping harmonies of Sweden's wonderful polska tradition. But the symphony's second half drags, especially the long finale with its wandering, overwrought fugues. Still, this was a fine rendition: Stenhammar called his symphony "honest music with no frills", and the same could be said of this performance. In a good way.
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