In a week where the Melbourne Opera Company honoured the 100th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s death with a performance of La Bohème, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra opened its Town Hall performance last week with another work of Italian opera.
Though smaller in scale, Rossini’s one-act farce La Scala di Seta is well liked for its oft-performed Overture, positioned here at the head of a programme of vibrant Germanic works from Beethoven and Mendelssohn.
Achieving a sophisticated balance of poise and mischievous verve, the piece served as a triumphantly jolly opener. Decorated with playful ascending lines of winds – of note, the curious exploring lines from clarinet – the work’s cheeky, adventurous nature represented a fine warmup for the MSO.
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This sense of exploration carried over into the next work of the evening, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, opening with a rich cresting swathe of strings. The pastoral, breathy billows here, in their relaxed flexible sweeps, draw upward a fantastic sensation of space.
It is atop the later presence of soft, firm brass rumblings that the solo voice of violinist Satu Vänskä emerges.
Performing on a 300-year-old Stradivarius on loan from the Instrument Fund of the Australian Chamber Orchestra – of which Vänskä is the organisation’s Principal Violin – the Finnish artist’s range of motion seamlessly entered the soundscape of breezy strings and hushed bassoon. Her performance throughout the concerto, either when in tandem with the orchestra or isolated in solo lines, was possessed of immense, quiet confidence.
Her stance was secure, gentle, at times swaying in line with the orchestra, but never overly extravagant. Vänskä’s range of motion throughout was controlled and exquisitely smooth-edged, gliding her bow with graceful vigour and seemingly without friction. The fluidity of her fingers and the strength of her wrist at all times radiated a glowing aura of silky brawn.
This quality of gentle brilliance was echoed by conductor Umberto Clerici, whose own gestures were contained within a small range of motion. Again, a performance of little flair but defined by a charismatic competence.
Such was the easy balance he settled within the orchestra – especially in the cleanliness of solo voice drawn from French horns in the closing movement of Mendelssohn’s Symphony #3: “Scottish” – there was little need to underline this with dramatic baton motions.
Radiant, clean, bright: the MSO remains luminous.
