Konsertrecension: Enchanting vocals and prillig mechanics when Elin Rombo sings Tarrodis the song of the Nightingale

Of tonsättartrojkan in the second viennese school, the rebellious gang who turned up and the bottom of the art music during the 1900-century first decades, Alban Berg has long been the most lättillgänglige. But he's so easily accessible to his modernist orkestersånger without problems can be combined with a symphony of Felix Mendelssohn, the epitome of a civil and kind music?

the Answer is surprisingly, yes. But it is for the Västerås Sinfonietta, chefsdirigenten Simon Crawford-Phillips and the evening's star Elin Rombo choose to express those seven songs on a maximum of mild and comfortable sweeping way.

Rombo is in the days in the middle of sing Roxana in ”King Roger” at the Royal Opera house, a role where she shines in ecstatic pleasures, but she will not go into in Alban Berg's ”Seven early songs” with the same passionate commitment. Her voice is sweet but she sings as well as discreet and distant. This concert seems a bit like a pleasant state of relaxation for her. Nothing wrong with that in itself – a nice concert is a nice concert – but the sharp darkness that lives in these unsecured songs will not really produce. ”Trinke Seele! Trinke Ensamkeit!” (”Drink soul! Drink loneliness!”) called it in ”Nacht”, but the Rombo and the sinfonietta does not seem to be excessively thirsty.

sounds a little harder in its original version for voice and piano in 1908; Berg arranged them for voice and orchestra twenty years later, and it is the version performed this evening. Whatever it is called poetic dissolved the songs, and when dissolved, the music gets a feather-light treatment turned on almost to the air.

Felix Mendelssohn's fourth symphony, " Italian, since he wrote it during and inspired by a trip to Italy, which the composer did in the beginning of the 1830s, is a spurious work. A spiritual and joyous symphony, but it has not quite the elegance and vitality that is the wienklassicistiska the models had, nor the excitement that are of a more distinctly romantic composers. It is simply ”just” nice music, nicely composed, a nice but not indispensable experience. Simon Crawford-Phillips manages to shake the life in the outer movements, but in between there is a little bit sleepy.

Andrea Tarrodis ”the song of the Nightingale” opens the concert and is the evening's most satisfying works. H. C. Andersen's fairy tale inspired her to music that paints pictures of both the enchanting singing and prillig mechanics, all the time with the composer's typical twinkle in the eye and big heart.

Read Maria Schottenius interview with Andrea Tarrodi, which was nominated for dagens nyheter's cultural prize of the 2018.