The Filter^ REVIEW

Ivanov

27.11.08, Wyndham's Theatre

Not since my English A-levels had I seen a play so soon after reading it. I had become used to watching performances based on plots that I'm barely familiar with, being introduced to characters for the first time. But this was different. This was a tense and nervous occasion, hoping that the event would do justice to a work that I am deeply fond of. I read the short, symmetrical play on a flight back from Belgrade which I think is the perfect context. Nikolai Ivanov is an unpleasant but morally ambiguous anti-hero. Belgrade is a city where pragmatism reigns, built on such convoluted history we can barely distinguish the heroes from the villains. In both cases our intellect revolts in a fit of misunderstanding, and despite feeling ethically repulsed we're left with infatuation, and an sincere emotional bond.

I was looking forward to this play as soon as I heard about the Donmar's much-trumpeted residency at Wyndham's Theatre, but was late getting organised. In the end I secured the very last ticket, on the very last night of the run. I suppose it makes sense to watch this play alone - it isn't light entertainment, it isn't trivial. You need to invest in it, need to believe in it, and it was fitting that I jumped onto a train in the pissing gloom of late November, grumpy after watching a meak Australian display in the Rugby, ready to see how this would go.

Ivanov is an arl arse. Grumpy, gloomy, wracked with guilt about his own disatisfaction with life and his inability to do anything about it. His farming efforts have failed. He owes money to his neighbour and is surrounded by people he loathes. He's fallen out of love with his wife and with himself. Remnants of a once proud, ambitious hero lie shattered as he stumbles through sheer existence. We are introduced to him with a gun shot fired by the irritating schemer Borkin, the manager of the Ivanov estate. The real meat of the play are the relationships that Ivanov has despite longing for solitude. He is so unmoved by his wife, Anna, he can barely communicate with her. She sacrificed her faith (and thus her dowry) to marry Ivanov, and is now dying from TB. Ivanov lacks the financial resources to send her to the Crimea, or the emotional resources to comfort her. As rumours fly about his original motives the young Sasha (daughter of Ivanov's creditor) declares her love for him, or rather her love for who he used to be and her confidence that she can rescue him. Just as Ivnov dares to dream that he's found his energy, Anna arrives.

Amidst this turmoil, the only voice of certainty is Anna's doctor, Lvov, unafraid to denounce Ivanov at every opportunity. He is appalled to think that Ivanov's past and prospective marriages are fuelled by pecuniary motives, and even more revulsed when he realises that this is a commonly held belief. Amidst the mud slinging, rumours and accusations Ivanov remains stoic, repeating that he's never lied. The play leapt to life in the exchanges between Kenneth Branagh (Ivanov) and Tom Hiddleston (Lvov). The former believes in the integrity of honesty, the latter rejoicing in the assertion of his own moral superiority. The man who speaks most about morals, sees morals so clearly, so willing to accuse others of moral bankruptcy, turns into a farce, and we're forced to feel sympathy for the broken man who sees the world as it truly is.

Throughout Branagh was outstanding, and it was a treat to watch. The play gave plenty of opportunity for him to demonstrate his genuine talents. This was a blockbuster - Branagh as lead, Stoppard as author, Grandage as director - but it was also formiddable quality. There is a real challange to bring Ivanov to life on stage, to get across such internal misery and despondency whilst still being the lead and having to make oneself heard. The assembly pulled it off, with busy and entertainting scenes involving the extended cast to complement Ivanov's soliloquoys and pounding dialogues. This culminated majestically in the final scene. Ivanov cannot bear being in the company of multiple people and stands uneasily. Whereas in Act II he finds comfort in the guitar (a wonderful use of the Russian role for folk), in Act IV a cello case lies empty - part symbolising the lost duets from earlier in the play, part symbolising that Ivanov is beyond escape. When he finally gives up, the play concludes with a wonderfully subdued yet blistering end. Standing ovation. Thrilling.

There is always a danger that something so ambitious doesn't quite become the sum of its parts, and there were certainly a few points of uneasiness. The script played up the wit within the text, and although at times it provided a comic respite by ridiculing Ivanov's frustration with the incestuous and dull monotony of his social circle, there was also a tendency to take bluntly serious (and achingly soulful) laments as light commentary. As ever, the audience seemed intent on extracting humour from the merest offering, possibly even when the delivery commanded sobriety. Although the play was originally intended to be a comedy, I would have preferred the darkness to take priority. There were also a few irritations with the text. I believe Stoppard's intention was to modernise, but why? One of the real joys of reading Checkov is the essentially pre-modern nature of his work (with streams of consciousness and intellectualisation etc), and there is a wealth of decent translations in existence. Yet at times (and I'm not a linguist so this is just a general feeling) sentences seemed clumsily modern, references seemed anachronistic, or simply out of context. This was all the more evident in contrast to the set design, perfectly faithful to the original - this wasn't (and shouldn't have been) a modern revival. It was (and should be) the triumphant demonstration that top quality theatre can be financially viable in the heart of the West End. More praise for the Donmar, for implementing a vision of what theatre should be.

Der Blumenstrauss, Basel Martinu Festival

9.11.08, Elisabethenkirche, Basel, Switzerland

The first concert of Basel’s latest annual celebration of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů presented a rare and fascinating chance to hear Der Blumenstrauss (‘The Bouquet of Flowers’), the composer’s 1937 cycle of folk texts for vocal soloists, choir, children’s choir and orchestra. The piece is fascinating but hardly ever heard; there’s only one poorly captured recording in the catalogue. As the assembled forces at Basel’s Elizabethenkirche dug vigorously into Martinů’s angular, brittle score, it wasn’t hard to see the main reason for Der Blumenstrauss’ neglect: it’s fiendishly difficult.

And those assembled forces were a mixed bag. If Basel’s famous for one thing, musically speaking, it’s the Basel Chamber Orchestra. So where was it? Otherwise engaged, maybe, but one hopes its current form would have produced a better ensemble sound than that of the Ensemble Basilisk, which seemed like it’d been thrown together. In Mozart’s C minor Adagio & Fugue that opened, the strings struggled to tune the more chromatic intervals and scurryings of the fugue. The orchestra faired rather better in the Martinů, rising to the challenge with spirited tutti playing, but the strings again were ragged and underpowered, whilst the timpani cried out to be hit with sharper, thinner sticks to bring out the Janáčekian eccentricity of their frantic salvos.

The overall performance of Der Blumenstrauss was, however, satisfying – due largely to the vocal contributions. The biggest challenges of the piece are handed to the adult chorus, who have to pitch a number of tricky chords from thin air. The Prague Chamber Choir managed that, and also sang with perfect diction and appropriately skewed, jabbing phrasing in Martinů’s more idiosyncratic passages. The tenors and basses produced an effortlessly still pianissimo in the deep, delicate sixth movement ‘His Kind Sweetheart’, which sounds like Martinů-cum-Mussorgsky. Clipped consonants, decent tuning and an appropriately villagey tone were also supplied by the children’s choir SurseeCantorei – though disciplined, they sounded like they were enjoying themselves.

Of four superb soloists, the soprano and mezzo stood out, largely because of the utterly unique, sit-up-and-listen music Martinů gifts them. Again, pitching some of Martinů’s entries is fiendishly difficult; the duet between the two female soloists in the second movement ‘Cowherd Song’ is every bit nature music – an impassioned caterwauling to which the chorus responds with trickily slipping wordless chords – and it had an intense beauty and honesty here, not least in its many music-filled silences. Mezzo Nina Amon was exquisite; her rich voice has a tinge of Slavic sadness which was delivered with passion and honesty.

The Elizabethenkirche is small, boomy and tall, which renders it as unsuitable as can be imagined for Martinů’s fast, rollicking movements; detail, including the tinkling piano part, was all but lost. The experienced Conductor Gerd Albrecht maintained control and initiated decent tempi in these quick movements, but he seemed to do little more in between; there were passages that were crying out to be phrased more keenly or have their rhythms pulled around. His tempi in the slow third movement, ‘Idyll’ – the orchestra-only interlude sometimes plucked out of Der Blumenstrauss and performed as a stand-alone work – was a touch quick, and Martinů’s trademark ‘fallings’ into perfect cadences passed without anything like their implied magic. It’s wonderful to hear a fantastic neglected piece like this at the hands of a modest and intriguing little festival, but you couldn’t help thinking – especially given the capacity audience – that lurking behind this valiant attempt was something of a missed opportunity.

Andrew Mellor

Some Orchestras

Welcome – retrospectively – to the month-long period when the UK benefits from the tail-end of the Proms season and the launch of the domestic orchestral season. Yes, it’s a little crude, but the opportunity for comparison is irresistible. 

New York Philharmonic, Thursday 28 August

One of the Proms’ big attractions was the New York Philharmonic, visiting under Music Director Lorin Maazel. On 28 August Maazel began with a new work by Stephen Stucky, which he seemed to tackle at arms length. Rhapsodies for Orchestra is an attractive piece, and its spasmodic moments of grandeur echoed satisfyingly around the Royal Albert Hall. The building also came into its own during Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, in which it seemed to trouble the big apple’s percussionists who lagged despite Maazel’s piercing stare and semaphore beat. But Maazel pulled moments of fascinating nuance from some of Stravinsky’s darker corners. Overall though, Maazel’s orchestra impressed most in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto, in which Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s piano was met by a violin sound of extraordinary silky sheen slipperiness rarely heard even from the ensembles who boast that as one of their characteristics. Some of the solo attempts at jazz playing from the brass and woodwind seemed disappointingly…well…un-American.

Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Saturday 30 August

A few days later the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, another ensemble of fine reputation, was on the same stage under its Principal Conductor the Finn Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Another new work opened; a moving piece of Mahlerian emotional scope from another Finn, the composer Magnus Lindberg. In fact, Seht die Sonne was the highlight. Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto was delicately introduced by the orchestra and Nicolai Lugansky. It continued delicately, too. And finished delicately. There just didn’t seem anything of differing substance in between. Sibelius’ First Symphony came next, the symphony that perhaps seems more immediately Finnish than any of the other six. Saraste’s pace at the opening was quick, which muddied the intricate scales with which the first movement folds outwards. This was a tight performance; too tight for the Royal Albert Hall – at least from where I was sitting. Saraste is back in London this Wednesday (15 October), where he’ll direct the London Philharmonic in the same Rachmaninov concerto and Sibelius’s Fifth; one suspects he’ll please a little more in that hall.
 
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Friday 12 September

Ah for a fine acoustic! It was to Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall on September 12th for the opening night of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s new season. Vasily Petrenko was joined by local boy and recent Gramophone Record-of-the-Year-winner Paul Lewis for a decent and sensitive Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto, preceded by a fascinating piece from the pen of another local musician Kenneth Hesketh - Graven Image - premiered by The Phil at the Proms a few weeks earlier. But the main event came after the interval: a blistering account of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony that seemed charged by an almost supernatural momentum. Petrenko wringed the broad, searing phrases of the first movement for everything. As the nightmarishly vivid second movement motored to a finish, a collective gasp shuddered through the capacity audience. The orchestra kept something in reserve for a devastating finale, with Petrenko releasing the tension with an astonishing combination of discipline and dramatic intuition. The Phil’s woodwind were collectively superb; its strings energised and virtuosic. The brass just about kept up, too. A very special evening.

Philharmonia Orchestra, Tuesday 23 September

Back to London for the opening of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s new season. This was a special ‘gala’ concert as it formed new Principal Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen’s first in post, despite his 25-year relationship with the orchestra and a spell as Principal Guest Conductor. The programme had Salonen written all over it – except, perhaps, for the lack of a new work. Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin snarled wonderfully. Then came Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto (soloist Vadim Repin) and, after the break, Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. Both are superlatively tough pieces to play, and both were tight, perfectly balanced and pleasingly luminous. Very impressive, yes, but also a little dry; if the Philharmonia bosses were expecting fireworks at the Royal Festival Hall, they would have been disappointed. Still, it’s difficult to find tangible reason for celebration when, as important and visionary a talent Salonen is, he’s effectively been with the orchestra for over two decades. The only excitement lies in the change on the orchestra’s letterhead, and the prospect of some interesting repertoire to come. Watch this space.

Andrew Mellor 

Psycho Buildings

The Hayward - one of Britain's most thought provoking and bold buildings - has been transferred into an adult playground. "Psycho Buildings" presents artist's take on architecture, offering a challenging and inspirational assessment of how we use space. The exhibition opens with Ernesto Neto, immediately invoking smells and textures I'd previously experienced at Tate Liverpool. This offered a perfect mirror for the feelings invoked by the exhibition as a whole - uneasy familiarity, brooding uncertainty, and awe at majestic craftsmanship. Do Ho Suh's 'Fallen Star' is the perfect sculptural homage to PhD transit, showing an imaculate scale model of his childhood home crashing through his university digs in New York. A simple, brutal take on migration and cultural disjoint.

This leads towards Los Carpinteros' 'Show Room'', an animated still depicting some form of explosion within a minimal urban space. It was haunting, eerie, and demonstrated the seemlessness of the total experience. Beautifully crafted fabrics and imaginative bolser wood constructions made repeat performances, and the creative use of outside space. The viewer was thrust fully inside the show, exploring all the way, getting lost, following people through doors without signs, wandering and wondering whether you've missed anything out.

The reason I noticed the exhibition was the large "Crystal Maze" type external bubble, sadly closed due to the weather. But the roof was also utilised for a scaffolded cinema playing black and white films to the soundtrack of the London traffic below. Elsewhere a sunken roof had been transformed into a boating lake, and we bobbed along an infinity pool a few storeys high. Pretty terrifying, but an increible inversion of space.

This was art as it should be - it grabbed you by the shirt, slapped inhibitions off your face, but in a thought through, holistic manner. Catch it while you can.

Major Barbara

This production launched the Travelex £10 season, and we'd taken due advantage. It was approaching 5pm as we took a stroll along the South Bank, and ducked into the National to see what was on. I've never read or seen a Bernard Shaw play before, and was expecting nothing more than I would from any other Victorian dramatist - moral debate with intellectual foundations, witty interplay between characatures, and perhaps a little boredom due to the sheer effortlessness of the experience. With Nicholas Hytner as Director I felt this was a sure bet, and everything good about the outreach of the NT. 

The performances were excellent, especially Simon Russel Beale as Undershaft - the armaments tycoon and estranged father to Major Barbara. Barbara is an idealistic member of the Salvation Army providing ample rom (duly exploited) to discuss Christianity, big business, poverty and war. Perhaps due to the overt idealism, I didn't find Barbara convincing, nor her fiancee - Cusins - a professor of Greek. It felt something of a let down for the physical dominance of Undershaft to be matched by a moral strength and conviction that eclipsed the younger members. The pragmatic opportunist did seem to win out, and the mental reconfigurations that allowed Barbara and Cusins to inherit the empire seemed nihilistic.

But there were no real villains in this play, and possibly no heroes. I didn't see this as an attack on the futility and hypocrisy of the Salvation Army (which is possible due to Hytner's stewardship), but struggled to gather which side I would be cheering for. The revelation that financial support is provided by a distiller and Undershaft himself, seemed less revelatory than the manipulative conduct of the shelters inhabitants - and as Undershaft noticed straight way, the manipulative behaviour of the shelters staff. But if the moral is that money corrupts, it's necessary to stray somewhat into the political ideology underpinning the play. Would our attitudes to Undershaft differ if he was a manufacturer of medicines, rather than bombs? Would we feel the same if instead of declaring that he'd sell his wares to anyone, he instead (and more accurately) specified states as his clients?

There was a lot of substance to this beguilingly minimal production. A small but robust cast, three scenes, attention on dialogue and interplay. It was neither emancipating nor thrilling, but was exactly the type of theatre that should always be available.

Monte Carlo: Orchestre Philharmonique & François-Frédéric Guy

Nestling twixt the giants of the Monaco's social and sporting calendar is a fascinating miniature arts festival, Printemps des Arts. You wouldn't think it so miniature from the hoardings and posters that are plastered around the Principality, but this is a festival during which you could happily attend every event without any onset of performance fatigue. A perfect size, you could say.

Two-thirds of the way into this two-week long, boldly programmed affair the pianist François-Frédéric Guy was well into his performance of the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas. In two concerts last Wednesday (9 April) he played Nos 15-21 at the Salle Empire, part of the spectacular Hotel de Paris complex adjacent to the famous Casino. It took a while to get used to Guy's style of playing in Sonatas 16-18. His it not scientific Beethoven, more philosophical - and the unevenness of some of his runs and ostinati were uncomfortable, as was the lunging drama of his interpretation.

In the second of the performances (beginning at 9pm - this is a town which comes alive at night), Guy seemed more settled into his Beethovenian vein. He picked out lines in the textures of the 15th and 20th sonata with a graceful beauty, and his 'sturm und drang' performance manner was more at home with the lyrical, almost operatic feel of the later sonatas, even if his dramatic conceptions occasionally trespassed on the music's sense of line and radiance. And you wouldn't have wanted to be the careless mobile-phone user who found him or herself on the receiving end of Guy's dagger-stare after his Beethovenian tirade was interrupted.

The following night, after aquarium, palace, museum, restaurant and opera house visits (the latter is quite unique and a genuine treat), it was off to the cliff-edge Auditorium Ranier III for a performance from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, a 150-year-old ensemble that says goodbye this year to distinguished maestro Marek Janowski, saying hello to Yakov Kreizberg in his place. But for this concert, the functionally titled 'Portrait Schoenberg', it was Eliahu Inbal who took to the podium.

The Auditorium Ranier III isn't the finest place to witness a concert - think London's Barbican Hall with the ceiling lowered by more than half its height, and you've got something of a picture - and the audience was inexplicably small. Beginning was a new work by Gilbert Amy; an interesting, entertaining and taught piece of post-Schoenbergian orchestral music which despite some special moments didn't quite hang together; harshly judged, a bad piece of good music. In Schoenberg's Violin Concerto the Orchestra played with discipline if not flair, but the talents of soloist Kolja Blacher made up for that. He tamed the beast, giving a warm but prickly performance of this slippery piece and finding new lyricism in many an obsinate corner.

The main-course was mouth-watering even when viewed from the menu: Schoenberg's gloriously luscious and only-just-pre-serialist tone poem Pelleas et Melisande. The murmurings that open the piece were rather clinical, but with encouragement from the rich, Romantic first violins the Orchestra soon got into its tragi-heroic stride, negotiating the sudden lunges, halts and introspections of the piece with genuine passion. As it climbed the peaks of Schoenberg's work, the Orchestra was stifled a little by the auditorium's unforgiving blast, but this was a fine performance nonetheless, which did its best to transcend the confines of an atmosphere-less hall. So if any Monte Carlans out there are wondering what to do with that spare 70-million euros, how about building a new orchestral cocnert hall for the Principality? This innovative festival and orchestra both deserve one.

Andrew Mellor

La Boheme / Finnish National Opera 11.1.08

    Helsinki's 1992-built ‘neo-art-deco’ opera house is perhaps the most beautiful and user-friendly in any European capital – even more so when it’s filled with Finns. The repertoire of its home company ranges from Monteverdi to Sariaaho, but last weekend it was ‘old chestnut’ Puccini’s La Boheme that filled the petite, rotund auditorium.

    After something of a year-long Sibelius trail, it seems strange to think of listening to Puccini in Finland – a country with a musical identity seasoned with minor keys, silences and suggestion. But some of the darkness of Finnish ideology fed into this rendition of Puccini’s heart-on-sleeve music: notably stark, industrial design and a chilling sense of the cruelty of winter. Reto Nickler’s unimposing production is a fundamentally musical one; the ‘moments’ from the score are fulfilled with some simple and obvious touches – Mimi and Rodolfo’s wonder into the blacks at the end of the first scene perhaps the finest and yet most obvious of them. But some hammy and disengaged acting also stalked this opening scene – the pantomime of the artists’ squabbling was a little over-played, and Rodolfo combined his ‘Be mine!’ proclamation to Mimi with the tidying up of wine bottles. Perhaps that was irrelevant though, because once Helena Juntenen’s Mimi arrived, you couldn’t take your eyes off her.

    Juntunen undeniably has something special. Though her voice is agile and beautiful, it wouldn’t place her in the highest echelons of world singing – yet. And still her complete performances are unique; she has a poise and presence that are extraordinary. Mimi might be too a obvious role for her – a wide-eyed, charming and immature character that Juntunen slipped seamlessly into – and thus it was at times difficult to separate the working opera singer for her illness-ridden alter-ego. But there was a rare belief and commitment to her performance. She somehow communicates the physiology of her technique when she sings, and by her on-stage death at the opera’s conclusion, you felt her exhaustion as she struggled to give birth to each of her still ravishing lines.

    Ari Grönthal’s Rodolfo was a little disappointing – his voice is attractive, but he wasn’t entirely in control of it and some of the big vocal moments lurched uncomfortably to their apex (it makes you realise how much some of this music demands). The chorus of adults and children were dealt with very suavely by Nickler; they never got to close to the protagonists, and the inclusion of a chillingly frozen vision of the children’s chorus at the start of the second act was effective. Perhaps the finest voice on offer was that of Juna Kotliainen playing Marcello, whose rounded, chocolatey tone is particularly pleasing. Pietro Rizzo conducted with great conviction, and the orchestral playing was concurrently forthright, sensitive, and exceptionally musical.

    The Finnish National Opera (Suomen Kansallisooppera) is a company built on quality, demonstrable in this double-cast production which highlights the talent on offer in Finnish opera, even when performing a staple of the Italian repertoire. But we mostly knew that already. What’s fascinating is to see an established opera come to life, full of its implicit international flavour, in the relatively small capital city of a relatively small country. Almost every seat was occupied by a grateful and unpretentious crowd of locals, who could have picked up a ticket for as little as €9. Not bad for the most pleasant and well-designed opera house I’ve had the good fortune to visit.

Andrew Mellor

[this review was written on the 15 January]

The Great Communist Bank Robbery (2004)

In early December Andrew and myself went to Ciné lumière for an exciting double-bill. I'll let him comment on the Finnish short, and focus my own attention on the 2004 film, "The Great Communist Bank Robbery". The background:

One quiet morning in August 1959, a car belonging to the National Bank of Romania was robbed in front of a central office in Bucharest. Four armed and masked men and one woman ran away with a huge amount of money, high-jacking a taxi. Less than a year later, a one-hour film on the robbery was already fascinating audiences throughout Romania. After they were caught, only months after the attack, the ‘gangsters’ agreed to play their own parts in this would-be ‘reconstruction’ scripted by Romania’s Political Police.

The 1960 film on the robbery, named "Reconstituirea" was aired for Communist Party members and was a bold move. At that point the Soviet Communists saw a Hollywood infatuation with gangster films as a reflection of the inevitable excesses of capitalism, and therefore there were no gangsters in Romania. As often happened, the "wish it were so" became an actual behavioural assumption, and it was simply considered impossible for bank robberies to take place. Consequently security was very loose, and the taxi was an easy target. Rather than cover up the robbery, however, they decided to turn it into a propaganda event.

It's not clear whether the 'gangsters' believed that participation in the reconstruction would reduce their sentence, but for several reasons the film is cloaked in ambiguity. Much of the content is Communist propaganda, from one of the most closed countries in Europe. Were they the real culprits? Why did they do it? What was the evidence? But "Reconstituirea" is a movie-within-a-movie, as another layer of documentary is added.

We see interviews with the original cameraman. We see interview with the children of bank employees who went missing during the night. We see interviews with a woman who was tortured. We also see interviews with prison guards, whose job it was to extract phantom information from innocent people. Have we reunited the tortured with the torturers? Why do they look the same?

Is the whole thing a charade?

The 'gangsters' were known as The Ioanid Gang, and at the time their fates were uncertain. All were sentanced to secret execution apart from one member, the female Monica Sevianu who was given life imprisonment, and later allowed to leave for Israel.

According to Nick Fraser, Series Editor of BBC Four's Storyville:

Alexandru Solomon's film is both a bizarre recreation of a crime of which the motive is still difficult to fathom and an astonishing evocation of a lost world of Romanian Stalinism.

It may not have been pleasant to live in 1950s Romania, but the images in the film have an eerie beauty.

In the sense that the sound of wooden planks rapping the bare souls of innocent people has "an eerie beauty", and ideological pornographers find solace in the depiction of the high years of history. This nightmarish portal raises many questions, not least how documentaries can exist within political repression. It's fitting that the BBC - an organisation that has voluntarily surrendered it's objectivity and search for truth - finds such beauty in a piece of theatrical brutality. The black and white camera work blends in and out of the original film, the voiceover hangs with an air of timelessness, amnesia, and possible regret. Eastern Europe's tragedy from the heart of the system.

But remember,

“These people have nothing in common with the construction of socialism in Romania”.

Of course not.

Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, 5.12.07

Not heard of Tampere? It's Finland's third-largest city, often compared to Manchester, and its municipal orchestra has been making its debut tour of England this week (The Filter itself will touch down in Tampere on the 10th January en-route to Helsinki as part of Finland Filtered). The 77-year-old Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, under Principal Conductor John Storgårds, has been taking in a succession of not-quite-major concert halls in the South East and Midlands since its arrival earlier in the week.

At Cadogan Hall in Chelsea the Orchestra presented an all-Sibelius concert (Pohjola's Daughter, Violin Concerto, Symphony 4), and it felt like every Finn in London was there - with plenty of trendy spectacles gracing the post-show reception celebrating 50 years of Finnish independence (in the same year as we mark 50 years since the death of Jean Sibelius). With this distinct feeling of home territory in terms of repertoire and audience, a spacious European rehearsal schedule no-doubt consolidated by the tour, and the 'generous' playing atmosphere of Cadogan Hall, one would do well to keep the superlatives in check. But there's no getting around it: the Orchestra's performance was breathtaking.

Initially striking was the warm, organic violin sound. Their 'step-up/step-down' sequencing, a Sibelius symphony hallmark, was played with subtlety and impeccable blend. So much of the composer's symphonic writing demands patience and intuition from players, and here that patience sculpted a smooth, delicate panorama which seemed carried by its own invisible Karelian breeze. From the opening attack of the cellos that launches the symphony you knew you were in for a piercing and illuminating account, and the brass followed suit with strong but shapely cascades; the rasping horns were magnificently sensitive. There are some who have long wondered what Sibelius is 'supposed' to sound like, why the orchestration can sometimes seem burdensome, and what his often unorthodox musical ideas mean. This performance of the composer's most elusive and introspective symphony provided one perfectly conceived answer, almost as if Sibelius himself was leading the first violins. A deeply moving experience.

Jennifer Pike's performance of the Violin Concerto exposed her main asset: a rich, wooden, almost Jewish tone in lower registers which gave much of the performance a sense of urgency. But the last movement was a touch too quick for her - Sibelius himself once commented that this movement should be taken 'fast, but no faster than it can be played perfectly' - and whilst the sound musical sense of her playing wasn't lost, she struggled to keep up and tuning suffered. Still, this was an engaging, stylish and sensitively accompanied performance.

Conductor John Storgårds steps down as the Tampere Philharmonic's Principal Conductor in 2009 to become Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic. Understated in terms of technique, it was his gentle pull of the Sibelian ebb and flow that showed he was inhabiting the music. The encore, Finlandia, was menacing from its opening brass salvos, and rose to an almost crushing climax. The obvious and perhaps passé question is, can only a Finn read Sibelius like this? Perhaps not, and this reading was different to those of Oramo and Berglund - more languorous, more shiny. But Storgårds' real achievement seems to be his building of this Orchestra's sound, For this part-time critic at least, not since the Mariinsky in January 2005 has a visiting orchestra in London played with such sonorous unity and instinct.

A performance as special as this should have been gifted to a busy Royal Festival Hall - it would have had everyone out of their seats by the encore. But this is an orchestra that needs spotting, and before its peaking form begins to wane. Proms, Barbican, Southbank, Bridgewater, Symphony Hall, Millennium Centre bosses - if you're out there, please get the TPO back here, and soon! 

Lahti Symphony / Bergen Philharmonic, 15-16.8.07

First there was Gustavo Dudamel's Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra playing a rapturous Mahler 5 in an acoustic test at the then not-yet-opened Royal Festival Hall, and now two months later we've had visits from two Scandinavian orchestras on consecutive days at the Proms. So for those interested in Scandinavian music and musicians, happy days. Members of the invited audience for Dudamel's concert on 2 June were forbidden from commenting on the concert in public arenas, but now it's probably safe to say that the 25-year-old Venezuelan presided over a performance of incredible maturity, direction and intellectual sense: the prospects posed by his future career for once live up to the hype of the press releases. He becomes Principal Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the national orchestra of Sweden, this autumn (and Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009), and I can feel the Scandinavian Airways loyalty card beckoning already...

Back to real time, and Osmo Vänskä's Lahti Symphony Orchestra playing an all-Sibelius programme on Wednesday night, in this the 50th year since the composer's death. Vänskä has led the orchestra for over twenty years, putting it on the musical map in the process (though Lahti still seems uncannily tricky to find on the actual map - apparently it's some miles north of Helsinki). The Lahti Symphony certainly has a singular approach to this music, both in concert and on record, and Sibelius's Seventh seemed even more concise than usual - at its opening brisk, angular and breezy rather than lingering and retrospective. That said, the Lahti strings found genuine atmosphere in the first movement, conjuring an icy, opaque northern feel to their impassioned climax that seemed hewn from Finnish granite. The silhouetted solos from the trombone and thereafter other brass were also quite different and somehow un-romanticised - certainly a refreshing view of Sibelius, or is this how we should hear his music all the time?

On Thursday Norway's Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra marked the 100th year since the death of Edvard Grieg, who was born in Bergen in 1843. This is a more globalised ensemble than the Lahti - the personnel list included a smattering of Anglophile names, players that Music Director Andrew Litton may well have coaxed from his previous ensembles in Bournemouth and Dallas on the promise of clean, mountainous air and a beautiful lifestyle. And with New-Yorker Litton at the helm, the orchestra's sound was distinctly more globalised - or dare one say American - too. There weren't the introspective and opaque qualities of the Lahti players, but rather a sound that was full-on, almost brash; seriously impressive nonetheless though. In Grieg's Piano Concerto and Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak the quality of every orchestral section was apparent - particularly the low strings and brass who played with fine blend and intuition. But a layer of American gloss seems to have fallen with Litton's leadership - 'Norway' and 'Grieg' aren't at its heart in quite the same way as 'Finland' and 'Sibelius' are with the Lahti ensemble.

Boris Berezovsky was a delightfully understated soloist in the Grieg - his glissandi sensitive, smooth and atmospheric - but communication suffered at times and there was the occasional lapse in piano-orchestra ensemble. The soloists who joined the Lahti the night before deserve a special mention. Firstly double-bass player Petri Lehto, who stepped up to sing the tenor role of Trinculo in Sibelius's incidental music for The Tempest before returning to his stool to continue on the bass. Quite extraordinary - and if it weren't for his evident talent in both roles it might have seemed like amateur night.

Then there was soprano Helena Juntunen, who sang Juno in The Tempest before turning to a selection of Sibelius's orchestral songs after the interval. Clearly Juntunen was relishing her first appearance at the Proms, and the audience was similarly enthralled by her excitable outward gaze and frank, athlete-like preparation before each song. Her voice has a particular light and agile quality, and she immediately conjured an atmosphere from the opening phrase of Hostkvall (Autumn Night). But it's her poise sets her apart - she has an unpresumptuous yet striking stage presence, and here injected her performances with character; never patronising her audience or over-egging the drama of her delivery. For a country of 5 million, Finland has produced a staggering number of exceptional conductors and soloists, many of whom are active all over Europe and beyond - at the Proms and with UK orchestras in particular. Let's hope Helena Juntunen joins their ranks before too long, and gets the chance to capture the imagination of a UK audience with her peculiar Nordic charm. Otherwise it really will be Scandinavian Airlines to the rescue... 

Andrew Mellor