But the playing was inspired, with hushed, transparent threads of sound in "Open Mind" and an underweave of mellow winds and shining brasses throughout the evening.
Midori and Mr. Aydin instead drew the listener inward, as she spun spidery threads of sound above the piano's inky chords.
It also provides him with a ready-made musical scheme that ends where it began, in wispy threads of sound, and in between moves through a series of wave-like episodes.
Luminously coloured threads of sound, with harp and tuned percussion prominent, are woven into an ever-shifting, pulsing sonic web, which Oramo ensured never threatened to overwhelm the voice.
Had Cosima Wagner's "secret treasure" been played this softly at its premiere, she might have slept through the first pale threads of sound, the voile-like portamento, the faint blush of vibrato, the gilded fluttering of woodwind and horn triplets, the clean, fresh oboe solo.
But Griffey never failed to make himself heard, and several times he seized attention not with stentorian tones but with a slender thread of lovely sound, as in the abbreviated aria "Now the Great Bear and Pleiades," in Act I.
