The classical New Year began tumultuously in London, with Beethoven's Eighth and Ninth Symphonies given by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under its music director, Riccardo Chailly. The programme, with its overt demands for revolution, respect, integrity and brotherhood, is traditionally associated with New Year's Eve in Germany: the Gewandhaus, having seen out 2008 with it in their home city, repeated their performance here the next evening. An electrifying occasion, it was a superlative example of radical music-making, and a reminder of why we should never take these most familiar of symphonies for granted.
Both performances seemed illuminated by the "sparks of divine joy", which the Ninth demands we acknowledge as the kernel of existence. We think of them as a Janus-faced pair, with the Eighth looking back at classicism from a point of encroaching dissolution and the Ninth heralding the Dionysian emergence of the new Romantic dawn. Chailly was seemingly anxious, however, to emphasise that the apparent disparity is not so clear cut. The Eighth, huge and titanic despite its comparative brevity, was all breathtaking rapture and elation. The Ninth, though never grandiloquent, had unusual qualities of introspection in its first and third movements, which were balanced by a scherzo of uncommon grace and a finale at once ecstatic and controlled.
The choir and soloists were faultless, while the playing gloriously combined technical rigour - long associated with the Gewandhaus - with the expressive immediacy the orchestra has gained under Chailly. The text of the Ninth speaks of mankind as being "drunk with fire", and for once everyone understood what the words mean. There was a standing ovation and a sense of elation in the air.
