Danger deficit: Haitink, Ax and the LSO perform Brahms and Beethoven
Brahms Third Symphony and Beethoven Emperor Concerto
Bernard Haitink, Emanuel Ax and London Symphony Orchestra
Barbican
Stalls L2, £9
10 October 2017
It's a cliché but sadly this is what I thought: how do you keep music wild while making it perfect? Does it matter if you sacrifice one for the other? Is there even a dichotomy between those two values?
I should say straight away that I greatly enjoyed this concert – not least through sheer admiration of the LSO, which are sounding to me more than ever like an ensemble of superb soloists, particularly the strings. The Rattle effect? Who knows, but they sound terrific (barring a few more fluffs from the horns than I would expect).
And then there's Haitink. He knows this music probably like no other conductor today. His experience of and thought on it spans decades and decades and the result is a whole load of nuance. Repeated musical statements were always differentiated though never naffly; inner parts were given a presence that never warped the music's natural contour; melodic shapes here emphasised voice-leading, there dramatically cut between parts, always in a way that integrated with the whole. It was a revelation.
But (a small but in the grand scheme of things). The Brahms I thought was magnificent, but I had a nagging, small thought: was it too considered? I don't really mean that I thought it lacked passion, which it certainly had in spades through the players. But maybe a slight lack of spontaneity, or of risk. Perhaps it's just when there's literally nothing else to complain about this is what I go to.
Anyway, the thought once thought could not be unthought, and it occupied me through the Beethoven – music which is endangered when you're inspecting it for lack of risk-taking. It was all extremely impressive, Ax, the orchestra, Haitink, Beethoven. But was something lost?
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