A new season, a new Beethoven cycle. Birmingham is going where Manchester has been twice in recent years and the Proms were less than two months ago. The nine-month Birmingham series includes all the concertos and a selection of the chamber music and piano sonatas, but its core is a cycle of the nine symphonies from Andris Nelsons and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
Though he has recently been conducting the Ninth on the orchestra's European tour, Nelsons started at the beginning, with the First and Second, and even before a note had been heard it was clear from the size of the orchestra assembled on the platform that his take on these works was going to be a thoroughly conventional one.
It all began briskly enough but was streamlined and rather cautious, almost respectful, as if Nelsons felt constrained by the classical good manners of the opening movements of the First. It was only when he reached the third movement, which Beethoven called a minuet but which is actually a scherzo (he only introduced that title into his symphonic scheme with the Second), that the performance caught fire, the strings began to dig a bit deeper and the wind acquired extra pungency.
The Second Symphony ended the concert, and the performance had the authentic Nelsons hallmarks from the start – the tightly coiled energy powering every phrase, the carefully delineated detail, the effortless sense of an organic whole – enough to suggest that he will be more than ready to meet the bigger challenges to come later in the series. Between the two symphonies there was more Beethoven, with Nelsons' fellow Latvian Baiba Skride as soloist in the Violin Concerto. If the performance lacked the excitement that Skride has brought to 20th-century works, its bittersweet mixture of exuberance and lyrical reflection seemed entirely right.
Available to hear again on iPlayer until 26 September.
