Concert Review A quiet moment was celebrated in the Helsinki City Orchestra’s concert in memory of the victims of the war – the Spring Russia program surprisingly became very topical

Culture|Concert review

Classic

Helsinki City Orchestra at the Music Hall 2.3. Lead. Antonello Manacorda, sol. Liza Ferschtman. – Prokofiev, Brahms

The masks have been stripped. The Helsinki City Orchestra played without masks, and the music was brought into the world from its own separate reality in the concert.

Curator Aleksi Malmberg spoke, a quiet moment was observed in memory of the victims of the war. Malmberg said it would not have been possible to imagine how topical the HKO’s spring program focusing on Eastern Europe and Russia will be.

Prokofiev completed his first violin concerto in the Revolution of 1917. The concerto is lyrical, at first you can even hear Tchaikovsky concert echo. It starts without the orchestra’s overture Sibelius and Mendelssohnin in the style of concerts, but goes its own way. Although it has the traditional three parts, the other is a wild, manic-extending scherzo instead of a slow one. The work ends in the beautiful scenery of the beginning.

Violinist Liza Ferschtman says in the handbook text that he likes the storytelling of Prokofiev’s music. That’s exactly the impression the call came from; that he told an interesting, toned story that he wants to stop listening to. Personally, in the concert, I hear a young man rumbling, trying to find his way, even consent. The range of interpretations made possible by the concert is endless.

Ferschtman’s voice is irresistibly deep, his playing appealing and touching. He created his own world around him – Antonello Manacordan the orchestra led by him played so elegantly and accurately that it was possible to take the space.

Encorena Ferschtman called Malinconian Ysaÿen from another solo violin sonate. In a speech before that, the native Russian-speaking artist condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Brahmsin the Fourth Symphony can be interpreted as a matter of renunciation, whether or not one thinks about it through the personal history of the composer. It is a work full of questions about the ultimate corners of life and ends with the fourth part From Bach to the exhausting passacaglia. The spectrum of emotions presented by the Symphony is almost endless; pain, sadness, light, longing, even shimmering happiness.

In comparison, the interpretation of HKO and Manacorda, who led it from the outside, remained a bit one-dimensional in my opinion (although a large part of the audience seemed to like the interpretation). Was there an overheat in the air? Maximum volume, absoluteness, and pathological sentimentality, on the other hand, played too much of a role in relation to more subtle modes of expression.

The concert started In a series originally composed for film music by Prokofiev Lieutenant Kiwi. If at the beginning there was occasional heaviness in time and time, no later than the fourth part of the course turned: the liberated atmosphere melted towards the fifth part of the funeral, its last evening echo echoing from the second world.