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Philharmonia / Salonen

Barry Millington's rating

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Festival Hall SE1

The great national epic of the Finns, the symbol of their liberation from seven centuries of Swedish oppression, was the Kalevala.

Ironic therefore that for its season-opening performance of Sibelius's Kullervo, based on the epic, the Philharmonia should have drafted in a Swedish chorus, the excellent Orphei Drängar.

At least they sang in Finnish, and we also had two fine Finns as soloists: Monica Groop and Jukka Rasilainen.

The youthful hero Kullervo, out on his sledge, forcibly persuades a beautiful young woman to share his duvet. Only when he hears, too late, her life story does the terrible truth dawn that she is his sister. Stricken with horror and shame, Kullervo has a brief conversation with his magic talking sword, before falling on it.  

With his implacable tone drained of emotion, Rasilainen was more convincing in self-reproach than as seducer; Groop did her best with the less than gratifying mezzo-soprano role. The work has its longueurs but it's good to hear it, and in the final stages the monolithic blocks of sound, redolent of the harsh Nordic landscape, were conjured from orchestra and chorus to magnificent, thrilling effect by Esa-Pekka Salonen. You may not have to be Finnish to conduct Kullervo but it doesn't do any harm.

Jonathan Burton's otherwise vivid surtitles were unhelpfully projected in pale yellowy-green on a white screen. And the less said about Viktoria Mullova's performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto the better too.

At her finest, Mullova is a superb musician but here she seemed stiff and uncommunicative, her bowing laboured. Concertos are traditionally arenas of heroic struggle but this was a losing battle.

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