In a Proms season that is marking a significant Vaughan Williams anniversary it was inevitable that a place would have to be found somewhere for what is often claimed to be the nation’s favourite piece of “classical” music. But not many would have predicted that The Lark Ascending would be included in a concert given by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with its principal conductor Nicholas Collon, or that a Finnish violinist, Pekka Kuusisto, would be the soloist.
It had also seemed unlikely in advance that Kuusisto’s performance of the Vaughan Williams would be the highlight of what otherwise turned out to be a disappointing concert. His rather withdrawn, intimate approach, almost an improvisation spun on the slenderest thread of sound, made it seem less rural idyll than elegy, an exercise in nostalgia written at a time when the way of life and the world it hymned was about to disappear in the maelstrom of world war.
