Elements

Having been raised in Hawaii, I have a certain affinity for the ocean (specifically) and water (generally). My husband, Philly-born and raised, spent childhood vacations in the Poconos and thus has a thing for mountains - he was in absolute heaven the three summers we spent together at the Verbier festival high in the Swiss Alps. Now, I like a good snowy peak, hiking on alpine fields and all that other great mountain stuff, but it's really a body of water (particularly the Pacific Ocean) that makes me happy. And it's more than mere enjoyment; I really feel like I'm in my element.

I'm on a short trip back to Minnesota after almost two weeks away, and I made it back to town in time to catch the Orchestra concert tonight. I've watched Osmo conduct countless concerts in my two years here, but it struck me that because of the vagaries of my schedule and the amount of time I spend on the road, I hadn't had the opportunity to see him do a Sibelius symphony. Luckily, I had that chance tonight.

When he is conducting Sibelius, Osmo is clearly in his element. And I don't say that glibly, simply because he is known as a fine Sibelius interpreter, or because both he and Sibelius are Finnish (although it probably does account for at least some of his affinity for that composer). The first half of the concert was excellent - a well-crafted and moving piece by Missy Mazzoli, a brief Bach transcription and a thrillingly played MacMillan percussion concerto, and Osmo was conducting with his usual keen focus and kinetic energy. But in the second half, with the Sibelius 6th Symphony, there was an almost imperceptible shift in his body language, a palpable relaxing of his posture, a more fluid vocabulary of movement that indicated an absolute comfort with the music.

It's not just about being intimately acquainted with a work; there needs to be a deep personal connection there. This sort of individual resonance with a work can come from continuous study and multiple performances over the years, but sometimes a conductor's profound affinity for a certain work or composer just is.

We conductors often find ourselves performing repertoire that, though great music (empirically speaking), holds no particular attraction to us. We might intellectually enjoy it and find it beautiful and worthwhile, but it holds no personal resonance, and we try to avoid performing it as much as possible; music is harder when you're not emotionally vested. I have my own list of works/composers in a "great music, but not for me" category (Bruckner comes to mind).

But with repertoire that has profound personal resonance, one finds a deep satisfaction in performance that's really hard to describe; there's just a rightness about it. It's easy to conduct when you're in your element. And it was lovely to see Osmo in his.