Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Olari Elts, made an impressive debut as guest conductor with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in this highly successful program.

Olari Elts. Photo © Kroots Tarkmeel.

Elts favours a lean, muscular, but moulded sonority marked by forward woodwind and the frequent use of extreme pianissimi in the quieter moments. This made for a powerfully arresting performance of Sibelius’s tone poem En Saga, Op. 9. This work was begun in 1892 with the final version appearing a decade later. It has no official ‘program’ but, especially in a performance as taut and powerful as this, expressively delves into the notion of Finnish storytelling and folklore.

The final climax of the piece had great intensity while the coda achieved wonderfully atmospheric poise.

The conductor brought similar energy and focussed textures to bear on Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 in E flat, Op. 70. His identification with this music seemed total and felt very idiomatic. It is the shortest of the composer’s symphonies but Elts made the listener very aware of the troubled underbelly of the outwardly jokey and sarcastic tone of much of the piece.

That plaintive...