There are concert programs that function as a dialogue across the boundaries of time and geography. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra (ASO) presented on Saturday afternoon, May 16, in the Elisabethzaal a triptych in which the Scandinavian nature poetry of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), the Slavic emotionality of Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) and the searching American voice of Amy Beach (1867-1944) met each other. On paper a somewhat hybrid constellation, in practice a programmatic line that proved unexpectedly coherent: three composers who each in their own way try to grasp a late Romantic language that stands at the intersection of both its peak and its dissolution.
Mist that becomes form
Sibelius' The Oceanides opened the afternoon not as a traditional overture, but as a slow emergence of space. The work from 1914 belongs to the period in which Sibelius increasingly abstracts his symphonic language. The sea he evokes has little in common with the explicit natural paintings of Richard Strauss or Debussy's sensual impressionism. With Sibelius the landscape emerges from within: motifs move like currents, attracted and repelled again, as if the music itself is subject to tides.
Conductor Jan Söderblom understood that dramatic arc excellently and consistently chose clarity and breathing space. The ASO avoided any form of late Romantic oversaturation. Especially the woodwinds built a refined network of color shifts in which light and movement were central, while the horns added extra depth to the sound with warm roundness. The harps too were given all the space to weave subtle glimmerings through the orchestral texture. It was also beautiful how the strings kept their sound transparent deep into the climaxes, allowing the music to continuously breathe. Söderblom did not opt for overwhelming natural force, but for a reading in which the landscape slowly unfolded and precisely thereby retained its hypnotic effect, although at times a certain restraint was noticeable where an abrupt shift in natural force would have been conceivable.
Stormy youthfulness
Next came Rachmaninov's First Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor, opus 1, a work that oddly enough is still treated as a preparatory sketch for the later concerti. This does the work an injustice. Certainly one hears the young composer searching for his own balance between Lisztian bravura and Tchaikovskian lyricism, but precisely that impetuousness lends the work its appeal. Rachmaninov writes here music that sometimes wants to say more than it can compositionally fully bear, and precisely through this emerges an exciting friction between ambition and control.
Alexander Melnikov confirmed once again why he belongs to those rare pianists who subordinate virtuosity completely to musical thinking, without losing presence for a single second. He moved across the keys with an ease that seemed almost offhand, while behind that apparent effortlessness lay a performance of enormous precision and intensity. His approach was analytical without ever becoming cold: technical brilliance was entirely in service of structure, lines were carefully laid out, harmonic shifts clearly profiled and climaxes built organically rather than gratuitously enlarged. Yet his playing simultaneously possesses precisely the drive that this early Rachmaninov demands. He played the concerto not as broadly spun sentiment, but as a nervous pulsating organism that continuously wants to move forward.
The collaboration with Söderblom and the ASO also proved exemplary. The orchestra profiled itself not merely as an accompanist, but as a congenial partner that continuously breathed along with the soloist. Where necessary, the fireworks burst from the stage, with powerful brass accents and broadly fanned strings, but equally convincing were the moments of stillness in which piano and orchestra found each other almost chamber-musically. Söderblom held the large line tight without depriving the music of its natural breath, whereby this performance found precisely the right balance between architecture and emotional impulse. Precisely in that interplay between eruption and intimacy did this concerto gain its full eloquence.
A tradition displaced
After the intermission the perspective shifted completely with the Gaelic Symphony. Amy Beach is still too often approached from her historical position as the first female American composer within the symphonic repertoire, while the intrinsic quality of this work remains underlit. Yet this symphony is much more than a musicological statement: it is an attempt by a young American musical culture to give itself form via European models.
Composed in the years when Dvořák called for a national American musical tradition, Beach does not choose exotic folklore, but opts for a subtler approach. The "Gaelic" elements function not as literal quotations, but as echoes of a migration culture. Irish melodic contours and modal turns flow organically together in a late Romantic orchestral language indebted to Brahms and Dvořák, yet simultaneously develops a remarkably personal lyricism.
Söderblom conducted the work not as a historical curiosity, but as legitimate repertoire, and precisely that confidence gave the performance its persuasive power. The ASO felt visibly and audibly at home in this warm, broadly breathing orchestral language and presented the symphony without any missionary gesture as an obvious part of the concert repertoire. This made it all the clearer how much craftsmanship and musical imagination is contained in this work. Especially the horns and woodwinds colored the whole with a melancholic glow that continually balanced between intimacy and expansion. In the second movement, an almost irresistible lyrical fluency unfolded in the woodwinds, while Beach unexpectedly lets a fiery center break open in the midst of that slow stream. Conversely, the scherzo acquires something introspective beneath its dancing surface; it is precisely these subtle shifts that give the symphony its own, elusive character.
The solo contributions were also particularly fine: the concertmaster and principal cellist gave the third movement an almost chamber-music intensity, with a warmly spun dialogue that organically wove itself into the orchestral texture. The ASO played this music visibly with love and engagement, while Söderblom continually watched over the large symphonic line and managed to draw from the score a degree of refinement and depth that far exceeds Beach's modest reputation. Precisely because of this, this Gaelic Symphony grew into more than a discovery: one of those rare performances in which one wonders why this work is not heard much more often.
What gradually unfolded
What ultimately made this concert special was not so much interpretive radicalism, but the intelligent way in which the program gradually unfolded. Sibelius abstracted the Romantic experience of nature into pure movement. Rachmaninov pushed Romantic emotionality to its breaking point. Beach relocated that same tradition geographically and gave it a new cultural self-definition – and proved to be one of the afternoon's most intriguing discoveries.
Thus this was not a concert of spectacular statements, but an afternoon of shifting perspectives and carefully built resonances. Music that does not impose itself by force, but slowly sinks into memory – like a ripple on water after the wind has died down.