Sibelius's First Symphony was the start of the most individual symphonic cycle of the 20th century, and the one work in the series in which the Finnish composer reveals the roots of his radical rethinking of the whole form. By the time he tackled it, he was no longer a composing tyro: both the Kullervo Symphony and the tone poem En Saga had already established his credentials, but those works seem irreducibly part of the Sibelius canon.
But the First Symphony is different, because it does conjure up the ghosts of Borodin and Tchaikovsky, especially in its use of late-romantic procedures that the later, terser Sibelius would banish altogether (the use of accelerando and crescendo to build tension, repeated phrases rising in pitch to emphasise expressive intensity).
Interpreters of the First need to decide which way their readings should point: whether back to 19th-century rhetoric or to seek out clues (like the pattering woodwind detail that appears in the first movement's opening) to the symphonic reappraisals to come. With the London Philharmonic on Wednesday, the Danish conductor Michael Schonwandt (currently in charge of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm) chose to look back. This was a brightly lit, excitable account of the First that went for broke at every possible opportunity.
Moment by moment, it was impressive - and the LPO played well for him, in the brittle, slightly flashy way that he seemed to require. But the symphony hardly seemed to punch its weight as it veered from one racy climax to the next, as if the music had come straight out of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture or one of the ballets. Too much flew by without really registering, and every movement - especially the finale - seemed to be over before its point was properly made.
Earlier, in Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, Schonwandt and the soloist, the striking young Frenchwoman Hélène Grimaud, did not always appear to agree in their approach (and at one even seemed to differ in their view of where the bar lines fell). Grimaud's tightly coiled nervous intensity, and her refusal to bash out the big tones as the hackneyed melodies they have become, cut no ice with an orchestral accompaniment that went for big, bold brush strokes, and which transformed the dark glinting textures into an homogenised wash.
The result was mysteriously unsatisfying, though not so puzzling as a programme note that described the Second Concerto as "less concise" than Rachmaninov's Third, which is in fact more than 10 minutes longer. The LPO's recycling of period-piece programme notes (I remember some from my first LPO concerts 30 years ago) really is becoming more than quaint.
