Early Beethoven can feel somewhat in the shadows of its great predecessors, Haydn and Mozart. The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op.19, much of it confusingly written before his first concerto, is a case in point. At times you may well wish you were listening to a Mozart instead, everything about the style is more foursquare, with the compositional nuts and bolts more evident to the listener, but then a shaft of rhythmic felicity or an unexpected modulation points to the very different proto-romantic world.
The opening Allegro con brio, written several years before the other movements, needs a particular lightness of touch from soloist and orchestra alike, which in this performance wasn’t always achieved. Jonathan Biss’s musicality was never in doubt, but the playing sometimes lacked the requisite personality and wit. Likewise, in the intimate Adagio there was a muted quality about the performance, which failed to draw the listener in. Only in the brilliant Rondo did Biss begin to let his hair down, with an aptly sprightly tempo and a sense of youthfulness coming through at last. He followed this with a generous and heartfelt encore performance of the slow movement of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” sonata.
Karina Canellakis and the London Philharmonic Orchestra had shown us their Beethoven credentials before the concerto with a razor sharp performance of the overture to the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, Op.43, one of the composer’s most theatrical curtain-raisers.
After the interval, Canellakis took us to a very different time and place, namely war-torn Russia in 1943. Written at breakneck speed, Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 8, Op.65 is one of the composer’s most spontaneous and personal orchestral statements. Its depiction of the horrors of World War II, which was still raging across the world, is uncompromising and harsh. The vast opening movement needs careful handling of the tempi to achieve the maximum impact. The long slow wind up to the central Allegro no troppo climax shouldn’t drag, but also maintain an implacable intensity. Canellakis managed this well and produced a high-octane account of the devastating central section, allowing the LPO’s excellent brass section full rein. All this fury dissolves into a long cor anglais lament, which was particularly heartfelt here.
Initially, the lolloping Allegretto movement that follows takes the listener into less severe territory, but this soon collapses into violent chaos. Again, Canellakis let the brass and percussion have their heads, clearly not interested in symphonically grading the climaxes as other conductors have tried to do, but showing the full horror at every opportunity. The relentless perpetuum mobile march that follows was incisive and cruel by turns, the tension never allowed to falter. The keening Largo was appropriately restrained, with beautifully played solos from the principal horn, flute and clarinet.
In the Allegretto finale, glimmers of hope appear with first extended passage that is in the major key. However, the music remains fragile and tentative, not able to find a way to a positive Soviet conclusion. Instead it returns to the violence and fear, fading away into ambivalent meanderings, the unresolvable unresolved. Canellakis presented the whole work in its raw state, not trying to shape it into a more rounded symphonic journey and the result was frightening and, indeed, chastening in our own troubled times.
