Reviews
Financial Times
LSO/Gardiner, Barbican, London (9 Feb 2010)
Here was
an irony. Just as the period-instrument Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
has embarked on a Beethoven symphony cycle with various conductors on the South
Bank, so John Eliot Gardiner – one of the first conductors to perform and
record “authentic” Beethoven – is bringing his own cycle to a close with the
London Symphony Orchestra on traditional instruments at the Barbican. It has
taken a year for Gardiner’s cycle to run its course. Twelve months on, and with
a European tour playing Beethoven just behind them, Gardiner and the LSO have
finally reached the last two concerts in the series. Whatever
else happened on the long journey, they have certainly not lost their energy.
At Sunday’s concert the First Symphony positively exploded into life. So far
from bringing period decorum with him, Gardiner had the trumpets blazing and
the timpani thundering. Beethoven may have been flexing his claws like a lion
cub in this early symphony, but the playfulness of the finale here was of the
roughest kind, red in tooth and claw. From
there to the Ninth Symphony was not such a big leap as one might expect it to
be. Gardiner’s performance of the Ninth was in the same vein. Head down, concentration
keyed up to maximum, the performers set out into the symphony at a tremendous
lick and never faltered. This was a single-minded assault on The
evening was distinguished by some detailed work from the LSO. The bass, Vuyani
Mlinde, set the “Ode to Joy” off to a fine start, decently supported by Rebecca
Evans, Wilke te Brummelstroete and Steve Davislim, and the Monteverdi Choir was
as thrilling as ever. The cycle ended last night with the “Pastoral” Symphony;
if Gardiner was in the same hell-raising mood then, the storm scene should have
been quite something. RICHARD FAIRMAN
www.ft.com/cms/s/2/148d935a-149e-11df-9ea1-00144feab49a.html
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