Links between the writings of Solzhenitsyn, Rilke, Van Gogh, and the Indian mystic Prithwindra Mukherjee seem remote in the extreme. But Henri Dutilleux's new song cycle, Correspondances, makes connections between these visionary texts. At Symphony Hall, the piece was realised with sensuous clarity by soprano Claron McFadden and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo.
Dutilleux, who will be 89 this year, has one of the finest ears in the business for orchestral texture and colour, and here the opening song, Cosmic Dance, flickered with glittering string figurations that wove around McFadden's supple vocal line. Even more striking were the weird accordion melody and frenetic solo for double basses that opened the second song, which set one of Solzhenitsyn's letters to Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, Galina. Best of all was the third song, Gong, in which Dutilleux conjured Rilke's "sound beyond the measure of our hearing" with a clangorous, resonant chord that shimmered above McFadden's solo line.
It's impossible for Dutilleux to make an ugly noise with the orchestra, even when depicting the "devil's mistral" in the final song, which sets one of Van Gogh's letters to his brother. McFadden soared to the stratosphere of her vocal range in the final climax, but somehow the sheer sumptuousness of the music limited its expressive range: for all its colouristic brilliance, the music only hinted at the dark side of Van Gogh's view of the world.
Oramo's performance of Sibelius's Fifth Symphony, however, was full of vertiginous drama and visceral power. The coda to the piece was a joyous, violent explosion, as if the music had become an overwhelming force of nature. But there was structural sensitivity in Oramo's interpretation, not just in the way he shaped individual movements - such as the thrilling link between the first movement and the scherzo - but through the whole piece. He created a single arc from the opening horn melody to the hammer-blows of the coda, encompassing a vast musical and emotional journey.
