Sibelius’s second symphony is “a confession of the soul” – an outpouring, however ambiguous. But what happens when a confession never comes, and a secret festers instead in collective silence? That’s the starting point for Festen, Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film, which was adapted into an award-winning opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Lee Hall last year.
There’s a fair bit of plot to a work in which incestuous child abuse is exposed during a patriarch’s 60th birthday party, but it’s the atmosphere that lingers, stylishly distilled in Turnage’s new Festen Suite – receiving its UK premiere here from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo.
