Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
The maverick trombonist and conductor Christian Lindberg has premiered more than 300 works, performing many of them in fancy dress. He has appeared as a cowboy, a Chicago mobster and, most famously, in full leathers for the Motorbike Concerto by fellow Swede Jan Sandström. For this UK premiere of another Sandström work, Echoes of Eternity, Lindberg appeared relatively restrained, wearing a violet metallic shirt.
If there's one thing rarer than a trombone concerto, it's a piece for two trombones; yet Sandström created this unique double concerto in homage to the Spanish city Cáceres. The ancient town mixes Roman, Islamic and Renaissance influences; Sandström's Concerto is an invigorating combination of minimalism, melodrama and cartoonish episodes whose squawking and honking perhaps suggest the colony of storks that nest in Cáceres's medieval towers. It took a minute or two to be sure that the piece had actually begun, as it emerged directly from the drone of the orchestra tuning up, with Lindberg initially playing unseen in the wings. He was joined by the Liverpool Philharmonic's principal trombonist, Simon Cowen, who had the honour of the last rasp, before Lindberg cut him off by popping a mute into his instrument like a mother silencing a noisy child.
Such clowning aside, Lindberg underscored his credentials as a serious conductor with a barnstorming account of Sibelius's Second Symphony in which the fervent, Finnish folk themes seemed to radiate Mediterranean heat and light. And he provided a thrilling conclusion to Carl Nielsen's Helios Overture, eking out one final solar flare from the double basses before the sun dipped below the horizon. Only a Scandinavian could be so determined to make the most of the daylight while it lasted.