If there is any danger of a surfeit of Beethoven in his 250th anniversary year, then Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO can be depended upon to avert it. Last night’s Symphony No 9 in D minor (Choral) was delivered, as always with these performers, as though every phrase, every note, really mattered.
Tempi in the first two movements were on the brisk side but with doubled woodwind and brittle timpani it was in no way a lightweight performance — the drama swept forward with urgency. The Adagio, by contrast, was rapt, with a wonderful clarinet solo from Chris Richards (oboist Juliana Koch equally admirable in the Scherzo’s trio).
All four soloists in the choral finale (Iwona Sobotka, Anna Stéphany, Robert Murray and Florian Boesch) were excellent, Boesch delivering the opening exhortation with particular eloquence. However, it was the splendid London Symphony Chorus that under Sir Simon’s direction brought such extraordinary immediacy. Sobotka was also the soloist in Berg’s Lulu Suite, here projected with a real sense of the character, for all the questionable morality that surrounds the opera, as true to herself: again total conviction from Sir Simon and his performers.
Happily this life-affirming occasion was filmed by the classical music TV streaming service Mezzo for subsequent broadcast.
