NEAR the end of a two-week break, last Friday, life became a busman’s holiday when I went to hear a concert I wasn’t reviewing. I did agonise about going, not just because it entailed me getting back onto my regular concert commuter-belt before I needed to, but because the fag-end of hurricane wots-her-name had given me three sodden drenchings in 24 hours and left me disinclined to cross the door.

However, the lure of Sibelius and Nielsen’s music proved impossible to resist, with SCO principal flautist Alison Mitchell scheduled to play Nielsen’s Flute Concerto that night and, above all, a fairly rare performance of Sibelius’s Third Symphony also on the SCO’s menu. All that, plus the fact that the ever-reliable Joseph Swensen was conducting, was decisive: Swensen’s been knocking my socks off ever since that unforgettable night, decades ago, when he produced a Beethoven performance with the SCO that pretty-well had the management chasing after him with a contract. So I found something dry to wear, took a deep breath, and waded out into another wet night.

This, the 150th anniversary of the births of both Sibelius and Nielsen, is a great period for those of us who adore the music of these Nordic giants. Okay, we don’t need an anniversary to listen to and celebrate their music; not these days, when we can have it on tap or online 24/7 in pretty well whatever format we prefer. The anniversary element gives it all a focus and, if we’re lucky, lots of live concert performances to hear and, indeed, new recordings to buy. As I write, I’m part-way through listening to a new recording of the Violin Concertos of both composers. It’s outstanding, and an extraordinary achievement by the Latvian violinist Baibe Skride, who is accompanied by the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra with Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali. That’ll be reviewed soon in the Sunday Herald’s CD slot.

There have been fine things in concerts, too, with plenty of Sibelius’ music on the menu, and some of it provocative. The first of the RSNO’s lunchtime concerts in its new RSNO Centre, which was formally opened on Tuesday this week, featured a scorching performance of Sibelius’s Second Symphony in which the band, with associate conductor Jean-Claud Picard, seemed to lock into the music, the fabulously-responsive new acoustic in which it was playing, and the entire looming sense of occasion with Sibelius’ 150th anniversary, the RSNO’s 125th and the baptismal call of the new centre’s cracking auditorium.

And we’ve also had the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Symphonies of Sibelius, all in one night, from the BBC SSO with its new principal conductor-designate, Thomas Dausgaard. That was one for hot debate, as it turned out, though the controversy had nothing to do with Sibelius and everything to do with Dausgaard. Then, of course, we had the Third Symphony last weekend, with the SCO and Joseph Swensen, which brings up another debate altogether: the relative neglect and intrinsic quality of that Third Symphony. We can’t really declare Sibelius Three to be “totally neglected”. What has happened is that, unlike the First, Second and Fifth Symphonies, which are all mainstays of the central orchestral repertoire, the Third, somehow, and inexplicably as far as I’m concerned, tends to appear only in the context of a performance of the complete cycle of the seven symphonies. So in Scotland we heard it in Osmo Vanska’s BBC SSO cycle in 1997. And we heard it again in the BBC SSO’s second Sibelius cycle in 2006, which featured a range of conductors, including Osmo Vanska who, coincidentally or otherwise, conducted the Third Symphony again, and who made a very different animal out of it, a much wilder beast.

The problem with the Third Symphony, as I see it, is not the music but those who bracket it as “classical” in its structure, thus more contained in its form, and then the conductors who direct it that way. Look beyond, behind and beneath the outer shape of the opening movement. There’s a real Sibelian animal in that music, one with muscle and teeth. Second time round, Vanska saw that and let it out. Last Friday Joseph Swensen saw it, and held it a bit in check until that unbelievable finale where it cut loose. The physical tension and strain, when the conductor really gets the point, are almost unbearable. Swensen had it heaving last Friday. And just when it feels it’s about to explode, it stops dead. There are a dozen variants on the yarn that, at that point in the writing, Mrs Sibelius shouted up the stairs: “Janne! Your food’s on the table!” and Sibelius just put down his pen and went for his dinner. It’s a colossal masterpiece, and should be played often.