LPO/Vänskä

The second half of Osmo ­Vänskä's ­Sibelius ­cycle with the London ­Philharmonic followed the plan of the first two ­concerts, interleaving the ­symphonies with more or less ­contemporary works. So the Fourth and Fifth were prefaced by one of Sibelius's supreme ­achievements, Luonnotar – the setting (half song, half miniature tone poem) of a section of the Kalevala dealing with the creation of the world, which was sung with deceptive power by soprano Helena Juntunen. Around the Sixth and Seventh came the final tone poem, the majestically chilly Tapiola, and the much slighter pieces for cello and ­orchestra, Cantique and ­Devotion, with Kristina Blaumane as soloist. If nothing in these concerts quite matched the remarkable sense of organic power and ­authority of Vänskä's earlier account of the Third, both were still entirely ­compelling. There was no attempt to smooth out or mitigate the anguished, angular ­contours of the Fourth, which, when presented in such an unadorned way, becomes a distinctly uncomfortable experience, while the Fifth was ­totally seamless – wonderfully geared through the ­accelerations of the first movement, and lifting ­effortlessly into the great ­swinging theme of the finale. If there were any disappointments, they came at the very end of the cycle, with a performance of the Seventh that was slow to catch fire, and whose drama never really compelled attention. But, before it, the Sixth was wonderfully relaxed, without a trace of ­unnecessary rhetoric and a ­perfect example of ­Vänskä's total trust in ­Sibelius's sense of musical architecture, the "miraculous logic" that gave the LPO series its title, and which he understands better than any other conductor today.