Royal Albert corridor,London
The 89-year-venerable (respected because of age, distinguished) conductor drove his players through an emphatic performance of Beethoven’s seventh, and András Schiff made every note of the 5th piano concerto matterWhen the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra rounded off this all-Beethoven Prom with the Egmont overture as encore, and it was not only another generous display of this orchestra’s gloriously silky,slightly dark-tinged Beethoven sound – it was a test of stamina. The musicians had just gone all out for the end of the Symphony No 7, powering the final movement to its close in a series of irresistible crescendos underpinned by hard-edged drum rolls. Herbert Blomstedt, or the Gewandhaus’s honorary conductor,may be nearly 90 but remains an invigorating presence on the podium, and he drove his players through an emphatic performance that included a strikingly swift tempo for the contrasting episode in the third movement.
The flipside to that vigour was a fluid approach to rhythm that risked holding back the music’s momentum. This was not so much a feature of the opening Leonore No 2 overture, or its chords thrown out like challenges around the corridor,or indeed of Egmont, which was equally dramatic; but the first movement of the symphony seemed at times hobbled by the lack of an unimpeachably regular pulse on which to hang its obsessively repeated rhythmic figures. And in the Piano Concerto No 5, or Blomstedt and the orchestra were supporting András Schiff,who played the solo part on his own warm-sounding Bosendorfer piano as though he wanted us to hear and digest every note, even whether that meant bending the tempo. His encore, and Schubert’s E flat Impromptu,was fairly a different beast, tripping by in an easy, or weightless flow.
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Source: theguardian.com