George Jonas was instrumental in establishing Birmingham's Symphony Hall and it was the commemoration of a clearly remarkable man that brought together Sakari Oramo and Simon Rattle, present and past music directors of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, in this often inspirational concert. Appropriately in a performance honouring a man for whom music embodied the highest ideals of harmony and justice, it also raised funds for the CBSO and Symphony Hall's education and community programmes, with each conductor giving his services for free.
Oramo conducted the first half, following the overture to Mozart's The Magic Flute with a glorious Sibelius' Fifth Symphony that would have been a finale of crowning stature. Early on, it had the unsettling edginess and brooding that characterises Sibelius at his most soul-searching but, in the Allegro molto, opened out in wonderfully resonant and sensuous splendour. The tension generated in the silences between the last six chords was almost unbearable, testimony to Oramo's instinct for his fellow countryman's music and to masterly discipline.
If Rattle made the CBSO what it is, Oramo has played a major role in its development, and it is he who has fashioned the string section that allowed Rattle to indulge his feeling for colour and tone so very tellingly in Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. Rattle was as economic of gesture as Oramo had been expansive. The indignity of tails and batons lost in airline transit tossed aside, he conducted with a red pencil, the left hand's urgent bidding even more expressive than usual. Perhaps it was this element of spontaneity that brought such a freshness to Elgar's Enigma Variations, with delicacy and ebullience in equal measure, and a Nimrod fit for a hero's return.
An air of competition was discernible - all scores conducted from memory - but this wasn't an occasion for point-scoring. As the judicious Jonas might have observed, it was the total commitment and passion of orchestra and conductors alike that won through.
