December 2011

Beethoven Symphonies Nos 1 & 9 - Sir John Eliot Gardiner/Monteverdi Choir

Fri 16 Dec 2011, Symphony Hall Birmingham

Express and Star, 19 Dec 2011
Sir John Eliot Gardiner directed a performance that was both refined in its attention to detail, and explosive in its emotional impact.
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Beethoven Symphonies Nos 1 & 9 - Sir John Eliot Gardiner/Monteverdi Choir

Thu 15 Dec 2011, Barbican

The Independent, 16 Dec 2011
This performance represented a rare meld between conductor and orchestra, creating the ‘sprung’ quality of a period band without sacrificing any of the big Beethoven effects.
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The Times, 19 Dec 2011
Gardiner harnessed the natural muscularity of the LSO to give a much punchier reading of a usually rather whimsical-sounding work.
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Daily Telegraph, 19 Dec 2011
Part of the urgency of the performance, I think, came from the fact that the LSO were not entirely used to playing it as Gardiner demanded ... the result was a sort of red-blooded clarity that period instruments probably wouldn’t have managed. Even the third movement was served up syrup-free.
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Artsdesk, 16 Dec 2011
Gardiner’s particular gift for textural effect transformed his orchestra into an operatic ensemble, the characterful little group numbers and duets of the closing movement each advancing the plot so vividly implicit in Beethoven’s music.
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Classical Source, 16 Dec 2011
In the Minuet – a scherzo in all but name – the timpani (played with hard sticks) made a thunderous impact and the large violin section scampered through the tricky Trio with an enviable lightness.
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Haydn/Beethoven/Nielsen - Sir Colin Davis/Mitsuko Uchida

Sun 11 & Tue 13 Dec 2011, Barbican

Sunday Times, 18 Dec 2011
Davis has offered big-boned, sharply honed, high-toned and securely witty accounts [Haydn], and one rarely wondered whether a thinning down of the texture, in period fashion, would be a viable alternative.
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Seen and Heard, 16 Dec 2011
The first movement was bracing in the extreme and included along the way moments of virtuosity that surely the LSO alone among UK orchestras could achieve ... A fascinating evening (as if one expects anything less from the LSO these days).
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Financial Times, 13 Dec 2011
This was the LSO on top form, the string ensemble in the slow movement’s evocation of the Danish countryside absolutely taut and together
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The Guardian, 13 Dec 2011
Davis unleashed the opening allegro with an irresistible swing, fabulously played by the LSO, but he was sufficiently inside Nielsen's symphonic imagination not to allow the more ruminative inner movements to be overwhelmed. It's amazing to think that Davis has only recently come to the composer.
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The Times, 13 Dec 2011
Uchida felt every bar afresh, and Davis’s orchestra, variously assertive, brightly coloured and hushed, was never far behind.
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Bachtrack, 14 Dec 2011
This was a full exploration of what a concerto has to offer – at times a contest, and at others, a collaboration – met at every corner by Colin Davis' supportive control. A tremendous final cadence to their exciting Beethoven cycle.
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Classical Source, 16 Dec 2011
Once again, a fine showing from the LSO in music that it can have performed but seldom: hopefully the four symphonies which have yet to be issued on LSO will appear during the course of next year, completing what has been one of the more remarkable projects to emerge from Sir Colin’s ‘Indian summer’.
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Daily Telegraph, 14 Dec 2011
That the other things on the programme – a Haydn symphony buoyant with blithe serenity, and a Beethoven piano concerto (No 5, soloist Uchida) with a slow movement of miraculously cushioned stealth – were so wonderful only emphasised the ways in which the Nielsen wasn't.
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Haydn/Beethoven/Nielsen - Sir Colin Davis/Mitsuko Uchida

Sun 4 & Tue 6 Dec 2011, Barbican

The Guardian, 8 Dec 2011
Davis's relish in attacking Nielsen's mood-swing structure was typically engaged.
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The Times, 6 Dec 2011
[Mitsuko Uchida] makes you glow. She makes you tingle. She reaches the parts other fingers don’t reach — something proven in Sunday’s London Symphony Orchestra programme (it’s repeated tonight) simply by her opening bars ... Leaving the platform for the final time, Uchida had given the audience the deepest of Japanese bows. After this concert, I gave Davis and the LSO one of my own.
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The Independent, 5 Dec 2011
... it was an encounter with Beethoven which went way beyond the usual questions of assertiveness and technical prowess: it was about beauty first and last.
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Evening Standard, 5 Dec 2011
The easy-going "Phlegmatic" second movement and the "Sanguine" finale were delivered with the verve and youthful exuberance the work demands, while the emotional profundity of the "Melancholy" third movement was given its due.
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Bachtrack, 6 Dec 2011
No wonder the LSO stands tall as an orchestra of versatility and refinement. Under Sir Colin on Sunday, it shone beyond doubt, helped in no small measure by the extraordinary Mitsuko Uchida.
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musicalcriticism.com, 7 Dec 2011
The orchestra itself has rarely sounded more vividly sonorous ... Overall, one of the strongest orchestral concerts I've seen in the past year.
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classicalsource.com, 5 Dec 2011
The LSO responded with real enjoyment to a piece that, thanks not least to Davis’s long-term formal control, emerged as less of a symphonic suite and more of a genuine symphony: for which, as for this conductor’s advocacy of Nielsen as this stage during his career, one can only express a measure of gratitude.
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