There are concert programs that function as a dialogue across the boundaries of time and geography. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra (ASO) presented on Saturday afternoon, May 16, in the Elisabeth Hall a triptych in which the Scandinavian nature poetry of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), the Slavic emotionality of Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) and the searching American voice of Amy Beach (1867-1944) met one another. On paper a somewhat hybrid constellation, in practice a programmatic thread that proved unexpectedly coherent: three composers who each in their own way attempted to grasp a late-Romantic language that stands at the intersection of both its apex and its dissolution.
Mist that takes form
Sibelius' The Oceanides opened the afternoon not as a traditional overture, but as a slow emergence of space. The work from 1914 belongs to the period in which Sibelius increasingly abstracts his symphonic language. The sea he evokes has little in common with the explicit nature paintings of Richard Strauss or Debussy's sensuous impressionism. With Sibelius, the landscape emerges from within: motifs move like currents, attracted and repelled again, as if the music itself were subject to tidal forces.
Conductor Jan Söderblom understood that arc of tension excellently and consistently chose clarity and breathing room. The ASO thereby avoided any form of late-Romantic oversaturation. Especially the woodwinds built a refined network of color shifts in which light and movement were central, while the horns added extra depth to the sound with warm roundness, and the harps were given full space to weave subtle glimmers through the orchestral texture. Also beautiful was how the strings kept their tone transparent deep into the climaxes, allowing the music to continuously breathe. Söderblom opted not for overwhelming natural force, but for a reading in which the landscape unfolded slowly and precisely thereby retained its hypnotic effect, though at times a certain restraint was noticeable where a sudden shift in natural force might also have been conceivable.
Tempestuous Youth
Then followed Rachmaninov's First Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor, opus 1, a work that curiously enough is still treated as a preparatory sketch for the later concertos. This does the work an injustice. Of course one hears the young composer searching for his own balance between Lisztian bravura and Tchaikovsky-like lyricism, but it is precisely that impetuousness that lends the work its appeal. Rachmaninov writes music here that sometimes wants to say more than it can fully bear compositionally, and it is precisely this that creates an exciting friction between ambition and control.
Alexander Melnikov once again confirmed why he belongs to those rare pianists who make virtuosity completely subordinate to musical thinking, without losing even a second of presence. He moved across the keys with a naturalness that seemed almost careless, while behind that apparent effortlessness lay a performance of enormous precision and intensity. His approach was analytical without ever becoming cold: technical brilliance was entirely in service of structure, lines were carefully laid out, harmonic shifts clearly profiled and climaxes organically built up rather than gratuitously enlarged. Yet his playing simultaneously possesses precisely that drive that this early Rachmaninov demands. He played the concerto not as broadly spun sentiment, but as a nervously pulsing organism that constantly wants to move forward.
The collaboration with Söderblom and the ASO also proved exemplary. The orchestra did not present itself as merely accompanying, but as a congenial partner that continuously breathed with the soloist. Where needed, fireworks burst from the stage, with powerful brass accents and broadly spreading strings, but equally convincing were the moments of stillness in which piano and orchestra found each other almost in chamber music fashion. Söderblom kept the large line firmly in hand without depriving the music of its natural breath, whereby this performance found precisely the right balance between architecture and emotional impulse. It was precisely in that interplay between eruption and intimacy that this concerto gained its full significance.
A Tradition Displaced
After the intermission the perspective shifted completely with the Gaelic Symphony. Amy Beach is still too often approached from her historical position as the first female American composer within the symphonic repertoire, while the intrinsic quality of this work remains underexposed in the process. Yet this symphony is much more than a musicological statement: it is an attempt by a young American musical culture to give itself form via European models.
Composed in the years in which Dvořák called for a national American musical tradition, Beach does not opt for exotic folklore, but for a more subtle approach. The "Gaelic" elements do not function as literal quotations, but as echoes of a migration culture. Irish melodic contours and modal turns flow organically together in a late-Romantic orchestral language that is indebted to Brahms and Dvořák, yet simultaneously develops a strikingly personal lyricism.
Söderblom conducted the work not as a historical curiosity, but as legitimate repertoire, and it was precisely that confidence that gave the performance its convincing power. The ASO felt visibly and audibly at home in this warm, broadly breathing orchestral language and presented the symphony without any missionary gesture as a matter of course as part of the concert repertoire. Thereby it became all the clearer how much craftsmanship and musical imagination is contained in this work. Especially the horns and woodwinds colored the whole with a melancholic glow that continuously balanced between intimacy and expansion. In the second movement an almost irresistible lyrical fluidity unfolded in the woodwinds, while Beach unexpectedly lets a fiery center break open in the middle of that slow stream. Conversely, the scherzo gains something introspective beneath its dancing surface; it is precisely these subtle shifts that give the symphony its own, elusive character.
The solo contributions were also particularly beautiful: the concertmaster and principal cellist gave the third movement an almost chamber music intensity, with a warmly spun dialogue that organically fitted into the orchestral weave. The ASO played this music visibly with love and engagement, while Söderblom continuously watched over the large symphonic line and managed to draw from the score a degree of refinement and depth that far exceeds Beach's modest reputation. It was precisely through this that this Gaelic Symphony grew into more than a discovery: one of those rare performances in which one wonders why this work does not appear on music stands far more often.
What gradually unfolded
What ultimately made this concert remarkable was not so much interpretive boldness, but the intelligent way the program gradually unfolded. Sibelius abstracted the Romantic experience of nature into pure movement. Rachmaninov pushed Romantic emotionality to its breaking point. Beach relocated this same tradition geographically and gave it a new cultural self-definition – and proved to be one of the afternoon's most intriguing discoveries.
So this was no concert of spectacular statements, but an afternoon of shifting perspectives and carefully built resonances. Music that doesn't force itself upon you, but slowly settles into memory – like a ripple on water after the wind has died down.
