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)
