Earlier in the week announced the Helsingborg concert hall that it will stop flying in artists and conductors. Now, if the berwald hall would get for themselves to latch on to this climate-smart pr coup in the future, it is of course convenient to Radiosymfonikernas principal guest conductor should be on either tågavstånd of Oslofilharmonikerna or a ferry ride away with his second hemmaorkester the Tapiola sinfonietta in Espoo.
The 23-year-old enrollment, Klaus Mäkelä is like so many other young Finnish sticks hot sought after internationally, but exudes a rather precocious perfectionism than youthful glow. It need not, of course, be wrong in itself, but in mäkelä’s athletically elegant interpretation, it is undeniably difficult to hear the move that got one of the first critics to resemble Beethoven’s second symphony at a wounded dragon that turns to pain and eventually bleeds to death. In modern ears are chockvärdet, so to speak, limited in spite of the hickande the subject who puts the bunny at the fourth movement.
At Friday’s concert, Luciano Berios modern orchestration of Bach’s unfinished fugue ”Contrapunctus XIX” from ”Die Kunst der Fuge” act as a kind of Beethovenintro. But the evening kick-started prior to that with John Adams ”Short ride in a fast machine”, an fartblind fyraminutersfärd with postminimalistiskt driving pulse in a delicious orkesterfanfar that for once signaled the modern era.
But after this vrålåk it became all the more time for reflection, performing Mendelssohn’s violin concerto (after application modification from Szymanowskis ditto). Leonidas Kavakos is soloist with the unremarkable appearance and nourished this standard work fondly, as if it were something fragile. It is not a exciting interpretation in the sense of bold, but beneficial chosefri. Rarely classical music as much as an echo from a bygone time, but at the same time sympathetic untouched. Just as carefully watched Kavakos then across the silence with the bow against the strings before he released until the applause after the encore – a Bachsonat with tranquil shimmering beauty.