GRAMOPHONE Review: Sibelius Violin Concerto/Lemminkäinen Suite – Ava Bahari, Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra/Rouvali

Hugely impressed by Ava Bahari here. She is truly a storyteller. There is untold generosity and cleanness to the playing and the best way I can express what sets apart her reading of this oft-performed piece is the value with which she imbues every note, be it part of a singing phrase or a driving rush of pyrotechnics. Nothing is ‘incidental’, every note has a purpose. And it’s generous too, expansive in the best sense with natural sounding rubatos. Her partner in this endeavour – Santtu-Matias Rouvali – is like-minded, carving out the rugged contours with dramatic starkness (the Gothenburg Symphony and he understand the work ‘elemental’) and turning the quietudes into deafening silence.

Sonically speaking, I love the immediacy, the way focus is pulled on so much inner detail – like those brooding bassoons in the first movement. Things which might escape notice in the concert hall. And the climaxes really are forbidding.

The second movement Adagio di molto is truly an aria – heartfelt and intense and and somehow ‘removed’ from the challenging landscape of the rest of the piece. In the finale it’s as if all the elements conspire to dance led on by the universal fiddler. It is fiery and then some with everything, not least those whistling harmonics, so bang in tune as to take the breath away.

The Lemminkäinen Suite inhabits the same landscape, of course, but myths reimagined from the pages of the Kalevala makes the storytelling more specific. Our dashing hero Lemminkäinen is lustily drawn by Rouvali as he cavorts with the ‘Maidens of the Island’; there is great panache in the playing and the virile climax of this quite substantial tone poem has the fervent desire of Tristan and Isolde reborn.

The familiar ‘Swan of Tuonela’ is by contrast chaste – darkly so, its (uncredited) cor anglais solo gliding across inky waters. The even greater contrast with ‘Lemminkäinen in Tuonela’ where our hero fails in his mission to kill the fabled swan is impressively bleak. As he sinks beneath the dark waters in shame the tremulous despair in the orchestra comes over in waves like a premonition of the windswept Tapiola.

There is a very real sense here of musicians in their element – not least, of course, Bahari whose Swedish compatriots rise to the collaboration. Excellent.