London Symphony Orchestra at The Hexagon, Tuesday 5th April 2005.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner is many things that an ideal conductor (from an audience’s perspective, at least) should be, he is physically expressive, his gestures are passionate, he is attentive to the music and carried away by it one beat ahead of the band – if one doesn’t now the music one knows exactly what is about to happen by watching this man snatch frantically at the air, or thrust a whole section of the orchestra to the fore, or by whispering them into the softest passage and then leaving the stage beneath in advance of a swelling crescendo. Whether any of this is of any use to such a finely honed orchestra as the LSO, who give the impression of being particularly capable players, is a different question entirely.
Beethoven’s Overture to Coriolan (Op. 62) that opened the concert was a mixture (as any overture should be) of stabbing dramatic chords, chasms of silence and honeyed melodies. It was more impressive than a mere curtain raiser has any right to be and did a far more than adequate job of warming the orchestra up for the real work that lay ahead.

There are two sorts of hesitation in the world, one is the sort engendered by not knowing what you’re doing, the other by knowing exactly what you’re doing but being an actor. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell which you are faced with, but paying attention to what comes next and what has gone before – to the setting – usually clears up the confusion. The opening of the 6th Symphony (Op. 68), the Pastoral, takes just this shape – cautious statements of the theme, tiptoeing around it – pausing, or seeming to pause – awakening. It is a beautiful mark of this orchestra that they can play like this, contrasting certainty and boldness with moments and passages of quiet and trepidation. But soon everyone has woken and the theme is boldly carried forwards through the whole of the long first movement, reappearing and reappearing until the final statement on the clarinet.

The second movement, which takes place beside a brook, is placid, peaceful and quite sure of itself until it reaches its end, where scored birdsong brings things to a close, once again making great use of the tremulous, almost shy tones that only an assured and talented player can bring, most especially in this case on the flute.

The final movements, which all run together – contrasting the honest joys of the dancing peasants with the natural drama of the mighty thunderstorm, followed by the gradual wakening of a damper but once more peaceful world – were played just as well as one could ask them to be. Had we been sent home at the end of that piece I think few people would have complained too much.

But there was still the 7th Symphony (Op. 92) to experience. With all the familiarity of old friends the first and third movements embrace you with powerful bear-hugs, and the beauty, crystalline and not at all fragile despite appearances, of the second movement is somewhat breathtaking. During the passion of the final movement, as the band were really letting rip, well on the way to the last of their climaxes, things became too much to handle and Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s baton shattered to flying splinters in his hand, and he managed to bring them home, safely, without it.

Some of the finest moments in Beethoven seem to be tucked away, subtly left just around the corner, there’s a great bassoon motif in the Peasant’s Dance that winks time and again but never seems to come to the fore and then in the final movement of the 7th there’s a little descending sequence (seemingly some precursor of Offenbach’s Can-Can) hidden away, which almost makes it out front, but which is exquisite nonetheless for all that. Dealing with work as big as this one finds that it is sometimes really the small moments one must focus on.

A F Harrold (c) 2005