Night of character and clarity
Did he step up to the podium like a music director elect? For London’s orchestra watchers, that will have been the question as Edward Gardner opened this London Philharmonic concert at the Festival Hall. No other conductor appears to be more in the frame to succeed Vladimir Jurowski, but neither the LPO nor Gardner himself – who is also talked of as a possible successor to Antonio Pappano at Covent Garden – have apparently made up their minds yet. Perhaps we will know by the time they return from a potentially bonding New York tour in mid April.
Both the major resident orchestras at the Southbank Centre (where the Philharmonia is also seeking a replacement for Esa-pekka Salonen) are urgently hunting new music directors, under pressure from the advent of Simon Rattle just across the river with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican. Rattle’s high profile guarantees full houses however adventurous his programming, a luxury these other orchestras cannot take for granted – though here the Festival Hall was gratifyingly full, perhaps because of a somewhat old-fashioned programme.
However traditional it looked as an opener, Beethoven’s Egmont Overture still sounded excitingly fresh. Enjoying clear rapport with the musicians, Gardner drew dark, ominous sounds in keeping with the play for which the piece was composed, Goethe’s portrayal of the 16th-century Dutch freedom fighter. With particular attack from the lower strings, the orchestra had surging power and drive.
From heroism to bruised melancholia, the programme continued with Elgar’s Cello Concerto and an auspicious LPO debut by the rising star Kian Soltani. His playing was poised and soulful, his tone warm, and the understated bareness with which he and Gardner unfolded the first movement was a reminder of just how radical the work really was when it was premiered to widespread bafflement a century ago. Bringing wit to the scherzo, supported by Gardner’s quicksilver baton, Soltani also delivered a strongly characterised finale before the music dissolved into stillness.
Given that the orchestra (and audience) still venerates its one-time principal conductor Klaus Tennstedt, a great Mahlerian, Mahler’s Symphony No 1 must have felt like a special challenge for Gardner. This is the work in which Mahler sets out his whole symphonic stall, and Gardner unfolded a magnificent first movement organically. Thereafter he kept things on a tight leash, perhaps a little too tight in the klezmer episode of the slow movement, but even as the thick textures piled up in the finale, this was a performance of character and clarity.