Maria João Pires / Sir John Eliot Gardiner / London Symphony Orchestra MENDELSSOHN Symphony no. 3 - Overture: The Hebrides SCHUMANN Piano Concerto

My dislike for Gardiner runs so deep that a voice in my head says, “Give it a rest.” He has won every battle I wish he’d lost, from Bach devoid of spirituality to Beethoven without depth. But win the battles Gardiner did, and in England he’s a cultural eminence. This is the second release under his direction from LSO Live in a short period, the other one being of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Apollo (the latter in a very good performance). At 71, Gardiner has been on the musical scene for a remarkable 50 years, and one can only admire the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique founded by him—they raised period performance to an unprecedented level. But I never felt that Gardiner possessed the requirements of a good general conductor, a bias reinforced here by his rackety, amateurish Hebrides Overture . The London Symphony would play it better without Gardiner’s arbitrary tempo changes, bumpy accents, and mundane phrasing. It’s helpful for a conductor not to be an impediment.

Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony is harder to manage thanks to its tricky transitions, but what stands out here are the vibratoless strings—what else?—and occasionally scrawny sonority. The brass tend to be raw and punchy. This, at least, isn’t a battle Gardiner and the HIPsters have won, although they’ve had their influence, as witness mainstream conductors like Vladimir Jurowski and Simon Rattle adopting period gestures in Beethoven and elsewhere. To his credit, Gardiner leads a robust if unsophisticated account of the “Scottish.” The fast music is buoyant without running away with itself; the slow movement flows nicely, although I get little feeling from it. (Expressive vibrato and rubato exist for a reason.) A general air of rambunctiousness energizes the whole performance, if that’s what you want in place of musical finesse.

Gardiner’s contribution to the Schumann Piano Concerto exists on much the same level, which isn’t that of the acclaimed Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. Pires is especially good in Schumann, as her highly praised DG recordings attest. When she is able to, she ignores Gardiner to inject her own cultivated style. I don’t mean to imply a shotgun wedding; the orchestral part blends well with the soloist, and in the best parts of the performance, especially the Andantino grazioso , Pires successfully leads the way. The few rocky passages—her awkward first entry in both the opening movement and finale—pass quickly. Pires’s delightful touch in the piano’s beguiling passagework makes the reading.

There’s a Leipzig connection between Mendelssohn and Schumann, and this may also account for why Gardiner has the LSO violins and violas stand for the “Scottish” Symphony. That was common practice in the past, in particular with Mendelssohn’s Gewandhaus when he was the city’s Kapellmeister. The violins and violas weren’t allowed to sit in chairs until the first decade of the 20th century. Today it’s a charming anachronism in limited doses. This CD has been announced as the first in a projected Mendelssohn symphony cycle from Gardiner and the LSO. I don’t shudder at the prospect. The concert was enjoyable, and the voice in my head is right about my Gardiner phobia. I should give it a rest (when warranted). (Huntley Dent)