Diane’s away in the US helping her mother, and I’ve been
away working in various places for the past 3 weekends, so Adventures have been
a bit scarce lately.
On Thursday, however, there was a concert of the BBC
Scottish Symphony Orchestra, featuring the Sibelius Fifth Symphony, conducted
by the rising Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu.
The Sibelius Fifth is one of my most favourite pieces of
music, ever since I bought my first recording of it in 1971. It has sweeping melodies, pumping rhythms,
and lots of emotional dynamics, from quiet solos to intense crescendos …. and
one of the most amazing endings in the whole symphonic repertoire.
So when I saw this on the schedule 6 weeks ago, I marked it
on my schedule and resolved to go. City
Halls, the home of the BBC Scottish SO, is only a five-minute walk from my
office, after all.
Various complications intervened during the week to throw my
Symphony Adventure into jeopardy, but in the end I made it with five minutes to
spare, sitting down next to two little old ladies who were pleased indeed with
their £7 concession tickets.
The BBC Scottish SO looked stylish but casual dressed in the
their black tops and trousers for this afternoon concert. Hannu Lintu bounded out form the wings, very
tall and Nordic, big hands, baton at times threatening to collide with the microphones
over the stage. He danced his way
through the Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin and Haydn’s Symphony 98, both very
tasty, the latter quite amusing actually.
Then, after the intermission, what I’d been waiting for: the Sibelius 5th
Symphony.
I think Sibelius is a composer whose music really is even
better when experienced live up front in concert. He passes melodies all around the orchestra
in a way that’s hard to capture in recordings.
The plucked pizzicati are more dramatic.
There are several places in the piece, one in the first movement and
then again in the final movement where it all builds up to such a level of
intensity and you can see the intensity of everyone in the orchestra playing in
unison for all they’re worth. It’s almost
unbearably powerful. It reminded me of
those moments of really intense emotional contact in therapy when the client
contacts their core pain, and something inside them shifts and you go with
them, you feel it in your body and all over.
According to the program notes, the Fifth Symphony was
inspired by a spiritual experience Sibelius had in 1915, in which he saw a ring
of 16 swans flying high in the air in a large circle. It took him five years to get it right to his
satisfaction, but this was the inspiration for soaring melody of the last
movement. This performance, which the
audience applauded enthusiastically for several minutes, was certainly the high
point of my week, and as I walked back to my office, appropriately enough
through the bitter Nordic wind and blowing snow, I felt elated and
inspired. As I said the next day to this
year’s EFT Level 3 supervision group, it’s these moments of intense contact
that makes life worth living. Long live
Sibelius and EFT!
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