Early Beethoven may have nothing in common with middle-period Shostakovich, yet there was plenty to commend this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert uniting the two under principal guest conductor Karina Canellakis.
The first half, comprising the traditional overture and concerto, got off to a spirited start with a crisply eloquent account of the overture to Beethoven’s The Creatures of Prometheus. Orchestra and conductor gave a noble and shapely reading with fleet strings and persuasive dynamic contrasts.
Equally sprightly was Jonathan Biss’s account of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 2, a lissom work whose origins lie in the composer’s late teens. The American pianist has a knack for imbuing even the most untroubled passages with a probing thoughtfulness, without overegging the pudding. Here he was at his poetic best, bringing out the music’s Mozartian lightness with delicate fingers floating across the keys. Congenial in the opening Allegro con Brio, he brought a calm introspection and grace to the central Adagio before galloping breathlessly through the Rondo finale.
With its brooding melancholy and outbursts of terror, Shostakovich’s wartorn Eighth Symphony found little favour in 1943 with Soviet authorities, who preferred the tub-thumping Seventh. These days we can appreciate it for the masterpiece it is: a work, like Britten’s War Requiem, whose subject is war, and the pity war inspires.
Cast in five movements, it runs the gamut, and so did Canellakis (though some moments landed more successfully than others). The 30-minute opener got off to a suitably elegiac start with minimal-vibrato strings lending the music a particularly eerie quality. But while the reading was admirably clear, almost delicate at times, there were moments when you longed for the conductor to throw caution to the wind and let the music spill its guts.
It was in the third movement and subsequent passacaglia where the symphony really found its feet. Bolstered by outstanding solo contributions from trumpet and woodwinds, Canellakis lashed the sneering march towards a grinding climax that toppled into a bleak landscape where a forlorn piccolo took comfort from a quartet of crooning flutes. A performance that grew in stature, then, before subsiding enigmatically into the composer’s unique blend of perplexity and hope.
