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SIbelius’s second symphony is a “confession of life” – an outpouring, though not clear. But what happens when disclosure is not forthcoming, and secrecy grows instead of mutual silence? That’s the beginning of Festen’s film, Thomas Vinterberg in 1998, which was it was adapted into an award-winning opera Writer Mark-Anthony Turnage and freelance writer Lee Hall last year.
There’s a small plot twist to the work where child abuse is revealed at a parent’s 60th birthday party, but it’s the atmosphere that lingers, distilled in Turnage’s new Festen Suite – a UK first here from BBC Symphony Orchestra and Zachariah Oramo.
You can smell the old wine and cigarette smoke wafting through the author’s clear lead voice, trembling – battered by the walls trying to push forward. After that, the eight groups move between songs – the wetness of Blue or Green, the gentleness of the shepherds in the Grandfather’s Song – and the resistance, slinky to the Conga with its rictus grin, extreme in the Interlude I. Then the revelations break everywhere in the strong shaking of the War, allowing their strings to shake and the strings to fall down. cleanly. It’s cleverly crafted and musically satisfying in its effects, without any dramatic operatic setting. I think we’ll be hearing a lot more in the future.
If Turnage brought a hip-shimmy and swing to Oramo’s performance, Sibelius – Finn’s home place – found him as straight as a Scots pine, leading us through this symphony in a clear way, the end visible from the outside. Running instead of releasing was the order of the day, until finally he left the brass, dropping us home with beauty, of course, and a lot of fun.
It was the catharsis we needed after Britten’s innumerable music. Musician Guy Johnston remained faithful, faithful to the concept of the musician: the musicians are equal, often they are part of the composition and not the goal. It’s a difficult balance to pull off anywhere; in the Royal Albert Hall risked a complete loss of consciousness whose information would be recorded on the radio, but which was partially lost in the meantime.
