Hymns of praise: a stirring climax to Schiff's Mendelssohn cycle

Sir András Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment brought their three-night London cycle of Mendelssohn’s symphonies to a fitting close on Friday with a rare outing for the Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise). “All that hath life and breath, praise ye the Lord”: the motto of the work, in sound and word, does not find a sympathetic echo in modern sensibilities. The design of three instrumental movements, forming a prelude to a huge choral finale, raises unfavourable comparison with Beethoven’s Ninth.

From their relaxed presentation of the sturdy motto theme at the outset, the OAE trombones hinted that Schiff would seek out a gentler side to the piece at the expense of its muscular assertion of faith, and so it proved. There is a default in much modern Mendelssohn performance to drive the music hard, and Schiff resisted it, drawing on the expertise of the OAE musicians to lift each phrase as gracefully and flexibly as they would address the composer’s chamber music.

Thus, the second movement Allegretto, which can persuasively be shaped as Mendelssohn at his most proto-Tchaikovskian, took on the soft, wistful quality of a Song without Words. The tangy colour palette of the orchestra’s string section imparted a burnished glow to the Adagio religioso. It was only with the entry of the choir for the start of the cantata finale that momentary slips of ensemble, and the inadequacy of the Queen Elizabeth Hall to serve as performing space for the symphony’s grand designs, became more pressing.

At 40 strong, the Choir of the Age of Enlightenment struggled to project over the orchestra. Schiff’s many gifts as a musician do not extend, on this showing, to choral work that unifies voices and instruments in an expressive whole. Lucy Crowe’s first entry turned up the temperature, but Schiff’s pacing still coaxed a steady warmth rather than fiery exaltation from one of Mendelssohn’s most soaring melodic inspirations. Hilary Cronin dovetailed with her neatly in their duet, but Nick Pritchard (as a late substitute for Nicky Spence) lacked the projection and urgency of his Bach Evangelists in the tenor role which brings the symphony to its point of spiritual crisis. “Watchman, is the night almost over?” cries the tenor, and Crowe’s affirmative reply swept for a moment all doubt aside.

For some of us, the Lobgesang is the yang to the F minor Quartet’s yin, the one no less than the other a full expression of Mendelssohn’s mature mastery, even if the composer would have been perplexed by the comparison. My companion for the evening arrived as a Lobgesang sceptic, however, and left the same way. The exigencies of a broken-down train deprived us of the Violin Concerto in the first half; all the more regrettable when the soloist was Alina Ibragimova, who has previously left no familiar corner of the piece unturned in several London concerts. Schiff held the score of the Lobgesang aloft at the end; evidently he believes in the work, as too few of his colleagues do, but its potential for transcendence remained elusive on this occasion.