Prom 72
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Antonello Manacorda
It’s a treat to hear Mozart’s first symphony, written in London – possibly on a day when the 8 year old Mozart was bored – played with all the respect and delicacy it deserves so that we hear every note and nuance of all that Mozartian promise. And of course, it sits particularly well on the contemporary instruments as Mozart would have imagined/heard it. You could feel the love with which Manacorda, batonless, shared it with the orchestra, which was reduced in size for this work.
Just as much of a treat – for me anyway – was Louise Farrenc’s third symphony. I suspect I was one of the few people on the hall who had any experience if it: we played it in the community orchestra I belong to earlier this year and it’s a fine piece. For this performance, more orchestra members arrived and Manacorda found a baton probably because this is a more complex and less familiar work than the Mozart so there was a little more conventional beating of time. The gut string sound was nicely balanced in the first movement with terrific timp work – and, obviously, these timps have to be carefully hand-tuned, often between movements. The very delicate dynamics and the horn and clarinet solos in the adagio made for warm beauty and I admired the crisp perfection of the scherzo which has to go like the wind. There were some pleasing rhythmic moments in the finale too.
All that, however, was really just a warm up for Beethoven’s Eroica symphony as you’ve never heard it before: edge-of-your-seat stuff. Manacorda, without score so there was no physical barrier between him and the orchestra, painted the music with his hands as well as dancing and singing (silently) a piece which I know like the back of my hand but which here seemed completely fresh. Yes, we all know that by the time Beethoven reached his third symphony he was actively smashing the classical mould but we’re so used to hearing it that it sometimes feels ordinary – not in this performance, it didn’t. Manacorda really made you sit up and notice those dramatic off-beat dischords at unexpected moments in the first movement. Sometimes he gets the effect he wants simply by stepping forward. We felt the lush poignancy of the funeral march which came in a movement full of exaggerated louds and softs – the dramatic control Manacorda coaxes from the orchestra is extraordinary. The finale, lifted attacca from the end of the scherzo danced away at impeccably crisp, breathtaking speed, The grandiloquence of the brass statements was arresting as was the depth of Manacorda’s contrasting pianissimos and it will be a long time before I forget the glory of that OAE timp sound,
This concert was the penultimate in this year’s season and, sad as it is that we now have to wait another ten months for more, was a glitteringly fine climax. No wonder the audience went wild at the end.
