![\"Munich](\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/gasteigMPhil2.jpg\")
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By ANDREW POWELL MUNICH \u2014 Young Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen<\/a> waved his arms heartily this week for Kullervo<\/i>, leading the Munich Philharmonic<\/a> at the Gasteig concert hall. It wasn\u2019t enough. Sibelius\u2019s impassioned sequence of tone poems (1892) demands wily control of dynamics and balances, and an intermittent spotlight on half-hidden themes. How else to correlate five epically inclined \u201cmovements,\u201d two of them vocal, with thin melodic ties and scant symphonic argument?<\/p>\n As performed on May 28, the second and fifth movements (Young Kullervo<\/i> and Kullervo\u2019s Death<\/i>) overstayed their welcome, and the 26-year-old composer\u2019s closing apotheosis missed its mark. The painterly start and Brucknerian flashes of the first movement (without programmatic title) did compel attention, helped by eloquent string playing, but the fourth movement’s bucolic refrains, well forward, negated its supposed devotion to war.<\/p>\n Kullervo and His Sister<\/i>, the central, longest and strongest of the movements \u2014 authorized by Sibelius for standalone performance \u2014 contrasted the matronly sound of Monica Groop\u2019s<\/a> mezzo-soprano (sibling and rape victim in this sorry Kalevala<\/i> tale) with Jukka Rasilainen\u2019s<\/a> virile, resplendent Heldenbariton<\/i>. Here and in the last movement, the score needs a substantial men\u2019s chorus, for lines mostly unison. The combined voices of the Philharmonischer Chor M\u00fcnchen<\/a> and Helsinki\u2019s 130-year-old Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat<\/a> fit the bill thrillingly, even if they could not disguise Inkinen\u2019s unpersuasive approach.<\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Andrea Huber<\/p>\n Related posts:
\nPublished: May 31, 2013<\/span><\/p>\n
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