Royal Festival Hall, London
Sibelius’s rarely programmed Kullervo closed a rich and varied programme of Nordic music in touch with nature

Concert programmes don’t come much more Nordic than this, the first in the Philharmonia’s series of Nordic Soundscapes. Nor would many pieces so aptly fit the subtitle, “music crafted from nature”, as Oceans, a 2018 piece by the Icelandic composer María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. Beginning with icy violins, then layering up notes and harmonies underneath, it conveys first the wide horizons at sea and then, when the deeper brass kicks in, the vastness of water underneath. It’s the kind of music that would go very well with some impressive nature photography – Sigfúsdóttir has orchestrated for Sigur Rós – and, indeed, later on it seems to zoom in or out like a camera shot, but it’s evocative enough to stand on its own.

Next, a Nordic warhorse: Grieg’s Piano Concerto, in which the pianist Stephen Hough made the solo instrument into an agent of disruption, always challenging the more measured, elegant lines of the orchestra, even pushing a little against the silky muted strings in the deceptively calm slow movement. For an encore, Hough gave us Christian Sinding’s piece Rustles of Spring, a Norwegian piano solo favourite of a century ago, its restlessly rippling accompaniment and hopeful melody fitting its title perfectly.