Music review: BBC SSO & Thomas Dausgaard, City Halls, Glasgow

Kullervo may not be the most refined and musically cohesive of Sibelius’ large-scale works, but this enormous five-movement choral symphony, based on an epic Finnish poem, remains a fascinating, embryonic insight into the spiritual and technical seeds of what was become the composer’s signature style. Conductor Thomas Dausgaard chose it as the focus of his final programme this season with the BBC SSO, and in a performance populated also by the Lund Male Choir of Sweden and soloists Helena Juntunen and Benjamin Appl, and featuring an ultimately inconsequential preamble of linked music by Finnish folk musicians, he captured enough of the music’s heroic impact, stylistic adventurousness and violent emotions to justify his bold decision.