The Leipzig Gewandhaus has always been a very fine orchestra, but since Riccardo Chailly took over as its music director in 2005, it has established itself among the greatest in Europe, alongside the Royal Concertgebouw and the Berlin Philharmonic. That climb to the top of the orchestral tree has been well documented in its regular appearances with Chailly, in London, over the last few years, including the latest, a four-concert residency at the Barbican devoted to the symphonies of Brahms.
For an orchestra as steeped in the Austro-German tradition as the Gewandhaus is, playing Brahms has always been part of its raison d'être. But Chailly brings a different perspective: as with Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mahler, his approach is both mindful of the performing traditions and critical of them in the best, most constructive way. His Brahms is neither massive nor self-consciously sculpted, but still totally coherent. The sense of forward momentum was obvious from the opening bars of the First Symphony, and the transparency of the textures – not something always associated with Brahms – added to its buoyancy and sense of purpose.
Everything seemed to point towards the catharsis of the finale. Even the climaxes of the two inner movements had an unexpected intensity that seemed to anticipate the emotional extremes to come, while the way Chailly plotted the opening of that last movement, up to the emergence of its great horn statement and the Beethovenian main theme that follows, had an operatic sense of theatricality. Like the rest of the performance it was completely assured, and the destination of the music was never in doubt.
The four Brahms concertos are paired with the symphonies, and it was the Double Concerto that preceded the First, with Leonidas Kavakos and Enrico Dindo as the violin and cello soloists. They seemed to take a while to settle into a convincing partnership, and even then their playing didn't delve far beneath the music's surfaces; for instance, the outer sections of the slow movement seemed distinctly unrapturous. The most interesting ideas came consistently from Chailly and the orchestra, in the detail of their accompaniments and especially in how they set an almost menacing pace for the finale – as if it wasn't quite the innocent folksy conclusion that superficially it seems to be.
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