Berliner Philharmoniker/Rattle/Kavakos review – eloquent exploration of Sibelius

Barbican, London
The Berliners command an orchestral palette that few others can match, and although Rattle conducted with plenty of urgency, there was a greater focus on symphonic structure, while Kavakos was compelling

To hear Sibelius symphonies played by an exceptional orchestra under a great conductor is pretty much a guarantee of new insights. That is unquestionably what we are getting in Simon Rattle’s three-night chronological survey in London this week with the Berliner Philharmoniker. And in this second concert, which bracketed the violin concerto with the third and fourth symphonies, they delivered plenty more.

As reviews of the first concert on Tuesday noted, Rattle’s Sibelius seems to have become more spacious with the years. This time there were few of the viscerally ebullient speed changes that conductors from Robert Kajanus to the 1980s Rattle brought to the coltishness of the third symphony. Instead, although Rattle conducted throughout with plenty of urgency, it felt as if the concentration was now more on symphonic structure and on the evolution of the Sibelius orchestral sound, much sparer in the third than in the first two symphonies, and reaching wonderfully austere new heights in the fourth, ultimate music of the north.

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