BBC Philharmonic/Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, review Thirteen years have passed since the BBC Philharmonic presented its last Sibelius cycle at the Bridgewater Hall. On that occasion, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Leif Segerstam took turns at the helm. This time, the orchestra's Finnish Principal Guest Conductor John Storgårds is steering all seven symphonies, and expectations have been high. The orchestra has taken the high-risk option of three shortish concerts containing nothing but the symphonies. But the days when Sibelius could rival Mahler for box-office pull are long gone, and with no contrasting repertoire or solo personalities on offer, it was no surprise to see many empty seats for the First and Fifth symphonies. It would be nice to report that the Bridgewater Hall stay-aways missed an inspiring event and that Storgårds is one of the great Sibelians of our day. Certainly the First Symphony could hardly have been more poetically launched, with John Bradbury's floating yet highly charged clarinet solo. But the first movement was not long under way before jerky gear-changes suggested an uncertain grasp of pacing. That was the worst, but not the only problem. Balance was far from ideal between the orchestral sections, with a recurrent coarsening effect on the texture. Nor was ensemble up to the Philharmonic's usual standards - at least three out of the seven movements in the concert started uncertainly, and several brass entries were behind the beat by just enough to disturb the momentum. There is still hope for this cycle. At least Storgårds does not overlay the music with superficial glamour or casual revisionism - both the slow movement and the finale of the First Symphony accumulated impressively, and by the end the orchestra seemed to have tightened its grasp on the score. The long tricky acceleration through the scherzo of the Fifth Symphony also went quite well. But for all its popularity, the Fifth is always a challenge - not for nothing does it appear as a set work in conducting competitions. Storgårds passed most its tests, only to blot his copybook in the late stages, slamming on the brakes in response to Sibelius's instruction "a very little more broadly." That left little room for the three subsequent requests for further broadening, and in the process sacrificed almost all the dramatic tension previously built up.