Dausgaard/Appl/BBCSSO - Kullervo

The Guardian 80

(Hyperion)
Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony conjure grand landscapes and a rousing plot with Helena Juntunen and Benjamin Appl the persuasive soloists

Sibelius had mixed feelings about Kullervo, the work that in 1892 marked his first big breakthrough – and so do today’s concert programmers. Even now, when the composer’s seven symphonies are standard repertoire, it’s not often performed. Sibelius described it as a symphony, but it is really more a set of five tone poems on an epic scale; its 75-minute length is one reason it does not get more performances.

That said, listening to Thomas Dausgaard conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, it’s hard to know what one would cut. The players are in prime storytelling mode, painting in dark but clear colours, conjuring up the landscapes of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. Dausgaard has the measure of this music, with its slow, tick-tocking, inextinguishable pulse, its sense of fast movement against vast immobility: a bird skimming low across a Nordic lake. There’s a crackle of excitement every time he shifts up a gear and the orchestral cogs find their groove.