I give you the conductor-proof composer - Sibelius

Sibelius was given an over-cooked outing at the Proms this year - but still kept his dignity.
Is Sibelius the most stubborn composer of them all? I found myself asking this while listening to Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct his Second Symphony at the Barbican last week. (The series, Sibelius Unbound, concludes this weekend.) Salonen took the first movement at one of the fastest tempos I've heard ever heard it at, while the so-called slow movement was anything but. The scherzo and finale likewise zipped along at a cracking old pace; in all, not the sort of performance I'd normally expect to hear of Sibelius's most grandiloquent, consciously epic symphony.

But it worked. There was nothing that sounded unnatural about Salonen's interpretation, nor was there anything that made me scratch my head and wonder what the hell he was playing at. It all fell very satisfyingly into place, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle - an analogy Sibelius himself used for his music - and the reason was clear: Sibelius is a survivor. His seven symphonies - all of them masterpieces - seem able to withstand any interpretation. I have heard fat Sibelius (Salonen's Los Angeles Philharmonic had no fewer than 33 violins) and I have heard thin Sibelius (Paavo Berglund's Chamber Orchestra of Europe recordings); I've heard slow Sibelius (Kurt Sanderling) and fast Sibelius (Alexander Gibson); warm, Germanic Sibelius (Karajan) and chilly, Nordic Sibelius (Vänskä).

And remarkably, I doubt if I have a preference for one style over another when it comes to the great Finn's music: it all sounds good. The same cannot be said for composers like, say, Brahms or Debussy. Who really wants to hear the Chamber Orchestra or Europe perform Brahms? Oh, it's been done - by the aforementioned Berglund, no less - but is anyone really going to step up and claim Brahms works as well with reduced forces as he does with the opulent massed ranks of the Berlin Phil? What about Debussy? Could his piano music survive an ascetic touch as well as a sensuous one?

I have listened to a fair amount of Sibelius in my time, but I can't think of any really bad performances. Mariss Jansons came close at the Proms this year, with a comically overcooked account of the Second, but the composer still somehow managed to retain his dignity throughout, shining through in the last, triumphant cadence. This was after all a man who forged a completely new music in a country with no national tradition, who found a voice both highly personal and universally potent. It is that clear-sightedness and stubborn determination which underpins everything he wrote and which makes him one of the very few composers whose music is virtually conductor-proof.