Riccardo Chailly's Barbican Beethoven cycle with his storied Leipzig orchestra has been one of the musical pinnacles of the year. Yes, in specific movements Chailly's tempi have been disconcertingly fast, even by modern standards, and the Leipzigers have occasionally struggled to keep up. But the energy and freshness of the five concerts in 10 days, in which traditional values and modern rethinking have been superbly fused, have been out of the very top drawer.
The final two concerts captured both the exhilarating Beethovenian sweep of the whole as well as triggering some of one's intermittent critical misgivings. Chailly's bold idea of inserting a contemporary commission into the midst of each programme should be accounted a major success, though Bruno Mantovani's Upon One Note, conceived in apposition to the fourth symphony, could have done with a bit of thinning out. The fourth symphony itself confirmed that Chailly is at his very best in the even-numbered pieces, the briskness never overwhelming the clarity and texture. The sixth began as if this was to be a Pastoral symphony for cross country runners, but the andante and the finale, though also brisk, achieved an almost ecstatic quality of music making, and this was, overall, the finest of all the performances in the cycle.
Prefaced by Friedrich Cerha's fine and well-structured Paraphrase of its opening, Chailly's handling of the ninth symphony was unerring. The most imposing performances of the opening allegro probably require rather more space than Chailly allowed. But the concentrated momentum of his school of Toscanini reading was irresistible, with the adagio unfolding rapturously. Curiously, in the choral finale, ultimate example of Beethoven's serial symphonic originality, Chailly seemed a tad more restrained, allowing the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and a team of soloists led by the committed Christiane Oelze time to articulate Schiller's ode before carrying the work to its blazing conclusion.
Read our critics on the earlier concerts: Erica Jeal on symphonies 3 and 8, Tim Ashley on the first and seventh symphonies, Andrew Clements on symphonies 2 and 5
