At the Proms this summer, Sakari Oramo conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in fine accounts of two Mahler symphonies, the Third and the Seventh. He opened the orchestra’s new season at the Barbican with another, perhaps even finer, of the Fifth. Those who remember Oramo’s decade with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra will already know what a special Mahlerian he can be, and that quality was evident in every detail of this performance, and reinforced by outstanding playing from every section of the BBCSO.
Oramo’s take on the Fifth Symphony was a typically fresh one. Here, unusually, the central panel of the work’s five-movement scheme also provided the centre of gravity of the performance, that rangy, rustic scherzo crammed with detail and led by the principal horn, Nicholas Korth, delivering his crucial solos from the front of the stage. But all of the movements were carefully characterised, with Oramo never overplaying his hand in the opening funeral march, and reserving the real impact of the great chorale first heard in the second movement for its reappearance to crown the finale. Some conductors make more capital out of the famous Adagietto than he did, but in the context of the whole work its contained emotion seemed just right.
The concert had begun with Ligeti’s early Concert Românesc, a potpourri of folk melodies interspersed with startling moments when the mature composer is vividly foreshadowed, all delivered with bite and precision. Oramo then continued his exploration of the music of the Croatian Dora Pejačević. He recorded her symphony and piano concerto with the BBCSO two years ago; this time it was one of Pejačević’s last orchestral pieces, the Phantasie Concertante for piano and orchestra, completed in 1919. This was the UK premiere, but it’s no neglected masterpiece, just a querulous single movement, with Rachmaninov-like piano writing that has rather over-strident orchestral support, so that the best efforts of the soloist, Alexandra Dariescu, were sometimes overwhelmed.
• Available on BBC Sounds until 5 November.
