A BBC Proms appearance featuring Finnish violinist, conductor and composer Pekka Kuusisto is never likely to be run-of-the-mill. His 2016 Proms debut culminated in a raw, vital performance of a Finnish folk song, introduced with the assurance of a professional standup comic and incorporating a full audience sing along. Since then there’s been virtuosic whistling and folk fiddling, a TV soundtrack and a collaboration with a neuropsychologist – as well as numerous concerto performances and a burgeoning conducting career. In the face of Kuusisto’s generous, voracious musicality, boundaries between “classical”, “folk” and “pop” disintegrate.
On paper, his appearance at this year’s Proms promised peak Pekka. The first half featured Ume Sámi vocalist Katarina Barruk, mixing her songs inspired by the indigenous tradition of joiking in a language on Unesco’s most-endangered list with short, mostly minimalist works. The second juxtaposed performances of Arvo Pärt’s Fratres and Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony by Kuusisto and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. “It’s definitely going to be a unique concert,” I heard a concertgoer reassure his friends as they surveyed a far-from-full Royal Albert Hall.
And yes, Kuusisto walked on brandishing not one but two violins. Yes, he smiled winningly as Barruk keened and crooned into the microphone in a language never previously heard in the Albert Hall, accompanied by electric guitar, drum kit and amplified soft-rock strings. Yes, Kuusisto’s solo performance of Hannah Kendall’s miniature Weroon Weroon – its UK premiere – was mesmerising, overtones glinting over a harsh, gritty ground. Yes, different musical traditions blurred as if born to do so and, in the second half, Kuusisto had one of the world’s best chamber orchestras dancing in grey tartan kilts and blazers like escapers from a 1950s boarding school – all while playing Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony from memory, its sharp edges chiselled to ferocity.
And yet despite the theoretical genre-mixing and the symbolic significance of the Sámi joiking, the costumes and virtuosity, much of this programme ultimately sounded very similar: smooth, moderate, quiet, slow.
Kuusisto’s encore was John Lennon’s Imagine, as he whistled and strummed his violin. “We have no words except peace and love,” he beamed, the evening’s gently pacifist subtext raised suddenly to the surface.
• Listen again on BBC Sounds until 12 October. The Proms continue until 13 September
