NOBODY in their right mind would give fewer than five stars to the playing of the London Symphony Orchestra at the penultimate concert of their festival residency on Saturday night.
Simply, the LSO is a luxury band, with no weak links, an ensemble of extraordinary integrity and such homogeneity of thought and character that listening to it is like hearing a tight-knit, large scale chamber group whose unity of intention, purpose and direction characterises its every move. Any issues of occasional imbalance in the ensemble are entirely the responsibility of the conductor.
Which brings us neatly to the meat of Saturday night's performances, and Valery Gergiev. He is a man famous and notorious for spending little time on rehearsal, more reliant, presumably, on releasing his high-voltage charge in the spontaneity of live performance. Fine, and occasionally, as I have remarked during this residency, awesome.
But there's a flip side. Risky strategies do not always come off. And that happened in spades on Saturday night, with Brahms suffering twice. As flawlessly played as the Third Symphony was, the interpretation was a bit routine, rather piecemeal, and just not quite harnessing the dramatic structure and force of the piece.
But the Haydn Variations was worse, with Gergiev never below the surface of the music, which was fast, flippant, and with a near-throwaway, dismissive quality of attitude.
It was almost as though Gergiev had reserved his energies for the explosion of exotic colours and blatant sensualities of Szymanowski's short but monstrous Third Symphony, which received a sensational performance from the LSO, Edinburgh Festival Chorus and tenor Steve Davislim. Poor old Brahms.
Sponsored by Shell.
HHHHH
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article