Sunlight on water: Sibelius and Beethoven

Programme

To keep audience members, staff and performers safe, it is now mandatory to wear a mask indoors at Southbank Centre, unless you are exempt. Read more about their safety measures on their website.

A conductor who feels most at home in the Finnish forest, and a violinist who is a vocal supporter of environmental campaigns, join forces for the final concert in the Philharmonia’s Human / Nature series.

Pekka Kuusisto is the Philharmonia’s Featured Artist for the 2021/22 season. He joins his compatriot, Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, in a piece that flows through the veins of every Finnish musician: Sibelius’s powerful and profound Violin Concerto. It’s hard to resist reaching for similes from the natural world to describe Sibelius’s music, and The Times called a recent performance of this masterpiece by Kuusisto ‘as silvery and fleeting as winter sunlight on water.’

Sibelius’s moody, intense musical landscapes are a far cry from the world of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. Beethoven conjures up a countryside idyll as perhaps only a city-dwelling Romantic can – a place of gently bubbling streams, birdsong, and, in the third movement, ‘a merry gathering of country folk’. Even the dramatic fourth movement, full of timpani thunder, brings us safely to the finale, ‘Cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm.’ Beethoven knew first hand the power of spending time in nature to bring solace from the storms and stresses of work and ill-health. He gave that solace to his city listeners in music that still brings us joy today.

This concert is supported by the Laurence Modiano Charitable Trust.