Paavo Berglund's long-awaited debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Meyerhoff Hall on Friday did not disappoint expectations. The Finnish conductor has long been celebrated as an interpreter of the works of his countryman, Jean Sibelius. It was scarcely a surprise, therefore, that the highlight of the evening was a white-hot performance of the Symphony No. 1.
This was a reading of Sibelius that had the authority that one associates with Bruno Walter's Mahler or Otto Klemperer's Beethoven. That is to say that it spoke directly, with a down-to-bone honesty and emotional force. The first movement, which grew organically from phrase to phrase, was delivered with power; the slow movement blended melancholy and nobility; and the third-movement scherzo was a breathless (and accurate) tour de force.
The final movement was the most impressive of all. This much-criticized movement may not be one of the composer's best, but one would not have guessed that from Berglund's performance. The conductor endowed it with note-to-note tensile strength, building the tension so cannily that the music roared by the time it reached its grand peroration.
Although Berglund is best-known as an interpreter of Scandinavian works, his performances of Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" and of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 4 (with soloist Stephen Prutsman) suggested that he is is just as impressive in other areas of the repertory. He maintained forward momentum in the Debussy without short-changing its dream-like atmosphere. The orchestra gave him everything for which he asked, including sensitively gauged levels of softness and lovely wind playing, particularly by BSO principal flutist Emily Controulis in the "Prelude's" famously difficult flute solo.
The performance of the Mozart concerto was also exemplary. Prutsman continues to impress as one of the finest American pianists of his generation. As his teacher, Leon Fleisher, once did, Prutsman gives us Mozart that combines elegance with power. Not the least of Prutsman's achievement's on this occasion were a slow movement that achieved poignancy without laboring, a final one that unfolded at a pace that enhanced the grim power of its successive variations and the pianist's own cadenzas, which perfectly fit Mozart's musical language.
The fine accompaniment Prutsman received from Berglund and the BSO featured a unanimity of ensemble and attention, unmarred by fussiness, to detail that made this concerto performance sound almost like a chamber- music collaboration.