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The Telegraph,
Aug. 14 2007 |
Geoffrey Norris |
Beethoven: 9. Symphony, Lucerne, 10 August 2007
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Electrifying artistry: Lucerne Festival Orchestra
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Geoffrey Norris reviews the
Lucerne Festival Orchestra/Abbado at Lucerne Festival |
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Claudio Abbado, who is making an all-too-rare
visit to London next week for a BBC Prom with his Lucerne Festival
Orchestra, gave a powerful indicator of the level of artistry to expect in
this elevating concert launching the Swiss festival's summer season.
At the Albert Hall he will be conducting Mahler's Third Symphony. Here in
Lucerne it was Beethoven's Ninth, an interpretation of absorbing spiritual
depth, intellectual lucidity and outstanding technical accomplishment.
The orchestra is handpicked by Abbado from the musicians he has worked
closely with over the years, a good many being from his Mahler Chamber
Orchestra but others coming from across and beyond Europe, together with
members of both the Hagen and the Alban Berg String Quartets.
The collective pedigree could scarcely be more illustrious, and any qualms
that the diversity of different performing traditions might result in
disparities of orchestral sound were dispelled by its sheer richness of
tonal blending, its dynamic colouring and its potent charge.
The immediately arresting aspect of this performance of Beethoven's Ninth
was Abbado's ability to elicit from the strings that strange, equivocal
sense of stillness and agitation in the opening bars. It was something that
had the firm stamp of authority and insight.
As the symphony progressed, this sharp focus on musical and textural
characterisation became a hallmark, be it in the way Abbado lightly pointed
in the rhythms of the scherzo, coaxed out the violas in the broadly lyrical
second theme of the second movement's adagio, or invested the cello tune of
the finale with such quiet dignity.
And hearing his approach to the cello and double bass "recitatives" at the
finale's start made one realise how flexible and speech-like they can be
made to sound, with subtle shifts of stress. This was an ear-opening
performance from the point of view of detail, but was also overwhelming both
for its organic conception and for the intensity of orchestral ensemble.
When the soloists and chorus added an even fuller dimension to the
finale, the effect was electrifying. The solo vocal quartet of Melanie
Diener, Anna Larsson, Jonas Kaufmann and Reinhard Hagen was luminous, and
the Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus (which will again be singing Beethoven's
Ninth when Mariss Jansons conducts it at the Proms on August 30) was
matchless in diction and projection. This was a performances that left one
shattered and elated in equal measure. |
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