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Chailly is famous for his up-tempi interpretations. But it is not just some personal idiosyncrasy based on Attention Deficit Disorder or the desire to be different or to rush and get it over with.
Most of what Chailly brings to Beethoven (below) is a superlatively successful and even thrilling fusion of period performances and big symphony–modern instrument performances. With Chailly, you don’t have to choose between period or modern approaches to Beethoven. You get the best of both.
Just listen to the first two symphonies of the young Ludwig. Has anybody ever captured better the impatient snap and crackle of these Mozartean and Haydnesque works which also shows the aggressiveness that Beethoven possessed right from the start?
Listen too to the more familiar works – the Fifth, the Seventh and the Ninth symphonies – and you can clearly hear how motifs and sections are organically tied together. You hear how the structure Beethoven so carefully constructed coheres and how his music machines work.
No cycle, of course, is perfect. Some listeners might like a bit more lyricism and gentleness with the Sixth Symphony (the “Pastorale”); but even there I find new discoveries each time I listen to Chailly’s reading.
Een post van ChrisRock nu 236 dagen oud.