Haitink’s Beethoven I: Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin,
London Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Haitink,
conductor, Barbican, 16.11.2005 (TJH)
Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 2
Beethoven: Violin Concerto
in D
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7
in A
Bernard Haitink
spent 2004, the year of his 75th birthday, revisiting
the cornerstones of his repertoire as a conductor, with
some of the finest orchestras in the world under his baton
and with countless doting admirers under his spell.
His performances of Mahler and Bruckner in particular
were amongst the finest of his distinguished career, but
his ongoing journey of consolidation and rediscovery did
not end when he turned 76 this March.
On Thursday, Haitink began
yet another reappraisal of one of the composers closest
to his heart, with the first in a series of all-Beethoven
concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra.
As a matter of fact, this
is the LSO’s first integral cycle of the nine Beethoven
symphonies in 21 years, so it was some comfort to see that
the concert was being recorded for posterity on the orchestra’s
own LSO Live label. Well,
let me be the first to recommend the future release of this
concert to CD buyers: it may be amongst the best purchases
you make in 2006, because it was certainly amongst the best
concerts I have been to in 2005.
Haitink’s opening gambit was a Leonore Overture No. 2 that sounded as epic as any symphonic
movement. Deploying
extended luftpausen to breathtaking effect in the slow introduction,
he unleashed the full force of the LSO’s brass and percussion
in the joyous Allegro
that followed, disproving the notion that the scholarship
of recent years has robbed Beethoven of his power.
And so too with the Seventh Symphony, whose famous
“slow” movement was taken at a proper Allegretto
clip, but proved all the more affecting for wearing its
tragedy so lightly. In
fact, this was a mostly carefree account of the Seventh,
closer in spirit to the effervescent Eighth than to the
broader scope of the earlier Fifth and Sixth symphonies.
Haitink showed it to be
the work of a master with nothing left to prove, simply
reveling in the skill of his craft.
But better still was the evening’s
centrepiece, the Violin Concerto in D – better because it
teamed Haitink up with a soloist who perfectly complemented Haitink’s great qualities as a conductor. Frank Peter Zimmermann has built up an enviable
reputation over the years, but his performance on Thursday
surely sealed his status as one of the finest violinists
of his generation. Like Haitink, he was
not one to wear his heart on his sleeve; but also like Haitink,
he was capable of producing some astonishing music-making,
allying a master craftsman’s technical prowess with a music-lover’s
foot-stomping exuberance.
Most impressive was his range of tone: at times,
the ghost of Kreisler seemed to
flow through Zimmermann’s instrument (once owned by the
great man himself); while in the folksy finale, he played
with an aggressive spikiness that belied his pitch-perfect
intonation. In all,
it was a flawless performance, a real classic, and one which
I very much look forward to experiencing again when it comes
out on CD.
Tristan Jakob-Hoff
