Royal Albert Hall, London
The 24-year-old Tarmo Peltokoski showed there’s substance to the hype with thoughtful Schoenberg – Kopatchinskaja playing with elfin grace – and an ambitious and moving account of Shostakovich’s fifth
After 11 years under chief conductor Sakari Oramo, the BBC Symphony Orchestra is used to having a Finn on the podium. Here, though, it was the Proms debut of the latest conducting phenomenon to come out of Helsinki. Tarmo Peltokoski has studied with everyone who is anyone in Finnish musical circles, from Oramo himself to Esa-Pekka Salonen. A series of high-profile appointments, which inevitably make much of his age – he’s 24 – have generated a buzz. There’s substance too, as evidenced by his airy account of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Greensleeves which opened the programme.
A lurching gear change saw Patricia Kopatchinskaja go head-to-head with Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto, a work she introduced as “unplayable”, unless of course the violinist is endowed with an extra finger (for the record, she isn’t). Nevertheless, she took the plunge, playing with elfin grace and demonic fury in equal measure, her body shimmying with sheer delight in a work she clearly adores.
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