Some concerts present not merely a succession of works, but unfold as a single continuous train of thought in sound. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra (ASO) presented precisely such an intense dramaturgy on Friday, May 8 in the Elisabethzaal: an evening in which Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), Edward Elgar (1857-1934), Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) and Richard Strauss (1864-1949) did not function as contrasts, but as different stages of one and the same inner movement – from restrained introspection to existential release.
Inward-turning remembrance
Sibelius' Impromptu immediately established an intimate atmosphere. No pronounced rhetoric, but a play of shifts on a micro level. Motifs appear, are probed and released again. Conductor Hankyeol Yoon clearly chose transparency here: not a thick sound, but an almost chamber music approach in which every voice remained audible. That approach created a field of tension that did not wait for an outburst, but for attention.
In that climate, Elgar's Cello Concerto gained a special intensity. The work, written in the shadow of the First World War, clearly bears the traces of a world that has lost its confidence, but Elgar does not translate that into great drama. This concerto sounds rather like an introspective retrospect: short motifs, hesitant lyricism and moments of hushed resignation alternate in a score that suggests more than it explains.
Sol Gabetta approached the concerto with a remarkable naturalness, as if from the first entry she was entirely at one with the fragile emotional world of the work. Immediately the intensity of her playing stood out: no pronounced drama or superfluous pathos, but a tone that directly touched the core of the music. What made her interpretation so convincing was the way she found the right balance between elegy, melancholy and unexpected vitality. In the lyrical passages her cello sounded warm, while in the more animated moments she kept the tension taut without ever forcing. Moreover, Gabetta did not lose herself in broad romantic gestures, but articulated the music with great clarity in phrasing and structure.
Yoon supported this with an orchestral approach strongly aimed at clarity and layering. No classical opposition arose between soloist and accompaniment, but a tight interplay in which motifs, colors and tensions were organically passed between cello and orchestra. He too deliberately avoided the traditional romantic swelling that can sometimes make Elgar's music heavy, and chose an approach in which details remained continuously audible. The strings sounded light and differentiated, while especially the melancholic woodwind dialogues took on a pronounced rhetorical function. The brass remained carefully dosed. In this way Yoon maintained the line of tension: not by pointedly working toward climaxes, but by keeping the whole in continuous motion.
A dreamscape between silence and shadow
After the intermission, the focus shifted to Rautavaara's Isle of Bliss (Lintukoto), a work that departs from a mythical image and refers to an imaginary "island of happiness", a distant refuge where migratory birds winter and where harsh reality has no hold. However, Rautavaara uses that notion not as concrete program, but rather as a starting point for music that balances between dream and remembrance. At the same time, a clear echo of Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead resounds in the dark undercurrents and undulating movements of the score: the same slow wave motion, the same fascination with states of transition between rest and unrest, between presence and disappearance.
Yoon and the ASO found for this a particularly refined orchestral breath. The strings laid down a soft, almost luminous sonorous foundation above which woodwinds and brass formulated themes less as much as added color fragments and shadows. He allowed the music to emerge rather than direct it, and thereby avoided any exaggerated drama. This gave the performance an almost timeless character: not the direction of the music was central, but its continuous presence in space.
In the fading conclusion the music seemed to slowly dissolve into silence, while harp and gong gently let the last resonances fade. Precisely thereby Rautavaara's conclusion formed the ideal transition to Strauss' Tod und Verklärung.
Dying as inner metamorphosis
This fascinating symphonic poem, in which Strauss gives voice to the final moments of a dying artist, unfolds as an intense inner process. From the unrest of physical deterioration the music grows through moments of remembrance and reflection toward the ultimate "Verklärung": a transcendence in which dying does not appear as an end, but as a form of fulfillment. In doing so, Strauss paints not a realistic death scene, but rather a state of consciousness in which remembrance, struggle and resignation gradually converge.
Here too, Yoon chose not for effect or rhetorical supremacy, but for an extremely controlled development from detail and structure. He approached the work not as a series of spectacular climaxes, but as a continuously shifting force field in which tensions gradually intensified. From the very opening measures it struck how transparently he kept the orchestral sound: motifs were sharply delineated without romantic oversaturation, whereby the underlying nervousness became all the more palpable.
Particularly impressive was the way Yoon managed to develop the large arc of tension of the work organically. The ultimate "Verklärung" thus did not come across as an abrupt climax, but as the inevitable endpoint of that gradual development. Especially striking was how initially the dark resonance of the gong remained almost isolated in space, after which the other instruments slowly began to gather around that sound and initiate the transition to another dimension.
Under Yoon's direction, the ASO brought forth a remarkably rich palette of colours. Noteworthy was how much detail remained audible, even when Strauss weaves the orchestral texture completely densely. The harp continuously maintained its place in the soundscape, while woodwinds added subtle shadows and flashes of memory without ever breaking free from the texture. The strings built broad arcs of tension with great homogeneity, while the brass placed powerful structural accents without disturbing the balance.
Yoon and the ASO made of Strauss' symphonic poem not merely a monumental closing piece, but a deeply felt meditation on mortality, memory and transfiguration that touched the heart profoundly.
Yoon as driving force behind a continuous dramaturgy
What gave this concert evening even more weight was the context in which it took place. Despite the cancellation of Mikko Franck, the complete programme was retained, which is anything but obvious with repertoire that is rarely seen on the podium, let alone with a clearly worked-out dramaturgy. That the young Hankyeol Yoon took on this responsibility, however, felt nowhere like a makeshift solution, but as an obvious artistic choice. He seemed not merely to conduct the programme, but had made the whole his own in a short time, as if it had been his own carefully considered concert trajectory from the start.
Hopefully we will see him work with ASO again soon: he is a talented conductor with striking maturity, and the orchestra too seemed to greatly enjoy the collaboration.
What ultimately made this evening so memorable was the exceptional coherence with which the entire programme unfolded. From Sibelius to Strauss sounded not a succession of works, but one consistent musical thought, which gradually became more concentrated and culminated in a broad symphonic breath. Sol Gabetta, the ASO and Hankyeol Yoon found each other in a shared logic of precision and concentration, in which expression consistently flowed from the musical structure. It was precisely this clarity that gave the evening its power of conviction: not a series of separate highlights, but one convincing musical trajectory.