Immediately prior to taking up his position as the new music director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Lars Vogt agreed to cover for an indisposed pianist at La Scala in Milan. He then hot-footed it to play a series of pop-up concerts in and around Gateshead. From Milan to the Metro Centre in under 12 hours: welcome to Tyneside, Lars.
Vogt inherits an orchestra at the peak of it abilities after a decade of development under Thomas Zehetmair. His first act as music director seems to have been to abolish the chairs (the band played perfectly well on its feet in the mall, so decided to stick with it for the time being). The physical freedom upped the intensity of Mozart’s early, angst-ridden Symphony No 25, whose foreboding minor theme crackled through the ensemble like an electric current.
A season-long exploration of the musical north commenced with a couple of curiosities. Sibelius’s Andante Festivo is not quite a festive as it sounds, being a grave little string fanfare commissioned to mark the opening of a sawmill. The Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür started out in a progressive rock band. Insula Deserta, his 1989 homage to his remote Baltic birthplace, combines still, glassy harmonics and sudden shifts of time signature, as if to chart the middle ground between Arvo Pärt and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
Vogt has played Grieg’s Piano Concerto countless times in his career (he made his Proms debut with the piece in 1992), but never while attempting to conduct it at the same time. Yet he barely seemed to be distracted by the division of labour: Vogt is such a communicative, hyperactive performer that when his hands were occupied at the keyboard he appeared to continue conducting with his knees. On this evidence, Tyneside audiences – not to mention the Saturday shopping crowds – are in for a rare adventure.
