ENCOUNTERS AT THE EDGE OF THE NORTH – SIBELIUS FESTIVAL 2025 LAHTI

If Mahler’s Todtenfeier is the tormented prologue of a symphonic saga, Sibelius’s Kullervo is a saga unto itself, an expansive five-movement work that straddles symphony, cantata, and tone poem. Premiered in 1892 when Sibelius was 26, Kullervo marked the young composer’s breakthrough, drawing on Finland’s national epic Kalevala to recount a tragic tale of fate, revenge, and ruin. At roughly seventy minutes and requiring a large orchestra, two vocal soloists, and a male chorus, Kullervo is an audacious early creation, brimming with nationalist fervour and Wagnerian ambition. Under Hannu Lintu’s baton, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and YL Male Voice Choir (joined by Rusanen and Tines) navigated this sprawling opus with commitment. Though the performance at times fell short of truly igniting the work’s epic fire, it offered many passages of great beauty, and showcased some of the orchestra’s finest qualities.

The opening movement (« Kullervo’s Youth ») burst forth with energetic, rhythmically driven playing. Lintu established a firm grip on Sibelius’s distinctive oscillating rhythms; the music’s tread, part march, part dance, had a sure-footed momentum. The strings dug into their figures with vigour, and woodwind interjections were sharply contoured. Notably, the flutes’ staccato motifs had excellent definition, piping up like folk-tale birds punctuating the texture. Lintu shaped the movement in broad, surging waves, showing an ear for Sibelius’s ebb and flow. He made effective use of silences too: several pregnant pauses were held with just enough suspense to keep the audience on edge before the next crescendo. Dynamic gradations were well-judged, from the rumbling timpani rolls in the distance to the full-throttle orchestral climaxes depicting the brash vigor of young Kullervo. If there was a slight reservation, it was that in this movement the orchestra was still finding its warmth, some brass calls and string tone felt a touch on the austere side. But overall, the drive and sweep were present, giving a strong first impression.

In the second movement (« Kullervo’s Journey »), the tone shifted to something more lyrical and atmospheric. Here Lintu struck a fine balance between lyricism and analytical clarity. Sibelius’s scoring in this section can sound episodic, but under Lintu’s direction it unfolded naturally, with each folk-tinged theme emerging and receding like scenes in a cinematic travelogue. The orchestra’s playing turned more nuanced: woodwind lines were delicately phrased, and inner string voices that often get lost were clearly audible, adding richness to the harmony. There was a wonderful subtlety in how Lintu prepared the movement’s climactic moments, one sensed a dramatic foresight, each swell foreshadowed and earned rather than thrown off abruptly. The Lahti players responded with finely shaded dynamics; a gentle melancholy permeated the violins’ songful passages, while the brass outbursts were taut but never overblown. The closing pages were especially memorable: the music dies away as Kullervo’s journey pauses, and Lintu dared to take it down to a true pianissimo. In that rarefied softness, one could hear the hall’s attentive silence, a poetic fadeout that felt like mist settling over a mournful landscape. It’s not often that this movement ends so hauntingly; here the effect was achieved and held beautifully.

The central movement, « Kullervo and His Sister », is the dramatic heart of the work and proved to be the highlight of the evening. It was in this expansive movement that the performance fully hit its stride. The YL Male Voice Choir made its first entrance with a superb presence: their sound was rich, blended, and appropriately stern, truly embodying the role of the Kalevala’s omniscient storyteller. Singing in Finnish, the men of YL projected the narrative with clarity and sonority, from hushed, haunting unisons to the ferocious cries that punctuate Kullervo’s tragic tale. Davóne Tines, as Kullervo, delivered a quite convincing performance. Although his Finnish pronunciation was serviceable if not idiomatic, he portrayed Kullervo with sombre intensity. It is not an easily defining role, more narrative than operatic, and Tines delivered it with gravity if not with an especially distinctive vocal imprint. Opposite him, Johanna Rusanen as the Sister matched Tines with a steely, impassioned soprano. Rusanen’s voice carried over the orchestra with ease, riding the waves of Sibelius’s drama, and she managed to convey the maiden’s initial tenderness and ultimate despair convincingly in her brief but crucial solos. Both soloists maintained a solid partnership, never overpowering the orchestra or choir, but rather meshing into Sibelius’s textural tapestry.

Under Lintu’s direction, the orchestra seemed to warm up fully in this third movement, unleashing a more vibrant palette of sound. The strings found a burnished intensity, and the brass, so slightly restrained earlier, now played with blazing conviction when needed, such as in the chilling chords that mark the sister’s tragic recognition. Woodwind solos (clarinet, bassoon) added poignant commentary, and the male choir’s interjections were electric, especially in the grimly exultant refrain that foreshadows Kullervo’s doom. Lintu paced this long movement very well: he allowed the narrative to unfold with inexorable momentum, yet also gave space for the emotional peaks to register. The rape scene’s orchestral build-up was appropriately terrifying, the music’s savagery delivered without distortion. Conversely, the aftermath, where the sister laments and then disappears, was handled with great sensitivity, the choir’s soft chant and the distant French horn calls evoking an eerie sorrow. By the conclusion of this movement, with the orchestra surging and the choir declaiming Kullervo’s curse, the hall was gripped. It was the sort of cathartic, full-blooded performance that Kullervo demands, and it earned the loudest, most spontaneous applause of the night when the movement finally crashed to its end.

After the monumental third movement, the remaining two movements can sometimes feel epilogic, but here they were given meticulous attention. The fourth movement (« Kullervo Goes to War ») featured some of the evening’s most colourful orchestral playing. Lintu drew out the martial character with crisp rhythms and biting brass fanfares. There was great attention to instrumental colour and detail, one could relish the piccolo and flutes pictoing high above the texture, or the clarinets adding reedy bite to the battle tunes. The Lahti Symphony’s woodwind section shone, each line cleanly etched even in fast, complex passages. The strings too had a bounce and precision, handling Sibelius’s tricky cross-rhythms confidently. As the battle music reached its peak, one couldn’t help noticing a certain Wagnerian echo in the sonic picture: the triumphant brass and rolling timpani had an almost Siegfried-like ring, as if Nordic myth and Teutonic heroism converged for a moment. Lintu seemed aware of this kinship, and he shaped the movement’s ending with broad, bold strokes that indeed conjured Wagnerian sonorities. This movement can sometimes come off as bluster, but in this performance it was robust and exciting without becoming merely bombastic.

The fifth and final movement (« Kullervo’s Death ») was handled with remarkable restraint and emotional insight. Sibelius ends his epic not with a blaze of glory but with a haunted, fatalistic calm, and Lintu respected that. The orchestra opened in hushed, pianissimo mode, strings and woodwinds weaving a dolorous lullaby of death. The atmosphere was that of a funeral lament, distant and mournful. Once again the YL Male Voice Choir entered, and they were impressive to the last, now assuming the role of a Greek chorus guiding the ritual of Kullervo’s self-destruction. Their soft incantatory singing over the light tread of the orchestra was one of the most affecting sounds of the night, full of dignity and pity. Tines and Rusanen do not sing in this finale, it is entirely narrated by the men’s chorus, and the YL choristers delivered the tale of Kullervo’s remorse and suicide with gravitas, never losing tonal focus even at whisper-quiet dynamics. Lintu’s control of these final pages was masterful: he allowed the music to breathe and the silences to deepen, so that Kullervo’s end felt like a true catharsis of sorrow. The very end was not stretched or sentimentalised; it emerged naturally as the culmination of the story. The final chords, bleak and resigned, faded into a long silence before the audience remembered to applaud. It was an emotionally elegiac conclusion, not a triumphant one, fully in keeping with Sibelius’s vision of tragic fate.

As the audience gathered its thoughts at the end of the evening, the conceptual pairing of Mahler and Sibelius undoubtedly gave food for reflection. On paper, the marriage of Todtenfeier and Kullervo made sense: two young composers confronting death through mythic lenses, each work a bold early step toward greater things. In practice, however, the « encounter » between Mahler’s funeral rite and Sibelius’s epic felt more cerebral than visceral. The transition from Central European late-romantic angst to Finnish nationalist legend was intriguing but somewhat jarring; one sensed parallel narratives rather than a true dialogue. The concert as a whole came across as a thoughtful opening statement rather than a white-hot burst of inspiration.

In terms of performance, Hannu Lintu drew solid, often beautiful playing from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and obtained disciplined, sonorous contributions from the YL Male Voice Choir and soloists. Technically, the concert was a success: ensemble cohesion was generally tight, balances were well-managed, and the tricky acoustics of Sibelius Hall were skilfully navigated. There were many moments to admire: the pellucid woodwind solos that dotted both Mahler and Sibelius’s scores, the burnished warmth of the lower strings, and the thrilling impact of the male choir in Kullervo. These elements stood out as highlights, evidence of a world-class orchestra and collaborators with a deep affinity for this repertoire. Yet, for all its quality, the evening stopped just short of catching fire. Emotionally, Lintu’s interpretations felt a touch reserved. Todtenfeier, especially, never quite unleashed the last ounce of Mahlerian desperation, and in Kullervo some sections (apart from the searing third movement) could have used a bit more wild fervour or Finnish « sisu ». Perhaps the conductor, new in his post and carefully balancing myriad elements, chose to err on the side of control and refinement, an understandable approach, if a somewhat careful one.

 In the end, this opening concert fulfilled its role as a ceremonial beginning: it posed questions, paid homage to Sibelius’s legacy and influences, and set the tone for further explorations to come in the festival. It was not a blazing, confrontational meeting of musical minds, but a measured, thought-provoking one. Lintu’s tenure with Sinfonia Lahti thus commenced not with a roar but with an introspective nod, an encounter at the crossroads of two composers’ early visions. As the festival continues, one looks forward to how these initially cautious “encounters” might evolve into more daring dialogues in subsequent concerts. The spark has been lit; now we await the fuller flame…