{"id":7121,"date":"2023-06-06T19:20:11","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T18:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=7121"},"modified":"2023-06-06T19:20:11","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T18:20:11","slug":"santtu-conducts-beethoven-marlowe-theatre-canterbury-05-june-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=7121","title":{"rendered":"Santtu Conducts Beethoven Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 05 June 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An esteemed music critic once said to me: \u201cWell we can\u2019t just go on listening to the same old pieces all the time\u201d. Well I can, happily – especially when they\u2019re brought off as sparkily as Santtu-Matias Rouvali did in this concert.<\/p>\n

He had me on the edge of my seat from the dramatic opening chords of Egmont<\/em> (1810) which arrived with more incisive bite than I\u2019ve heard in a long time. There was real excitement after the general pause too as Santtu drove the orchestra down the final page with all those wonderful brass arpeggios and piccolo glissandi. It was an arresting start to an all-19th century concert.<\/p>\n

The filling in the Beethoven sandwich was Bruch\u2019s first<\/em> violin concerto<\/em> (1869) played by Eldbjorg Hemsing who tall, blonde and wearing a beautiful emabossed silk gown in taupe looked as striking as she sounded. I loved the quiet drama she brought to the arrival at the glorious, Classic-FM favourite, adagio. It never palls and she made it sound exquisitely melodious, forcing one to listen as if one had never heard it before. Then came the gentle segue into finale in which her virtuosic double stopping (energico indeed) was nicely counterpointed with the languid grandiloquence of the orchestra\u2019s main theme. It\u2019s good to be able to see and hear, in live performance, the fine timpani work (Antoine Sigure) required in this piece because it is often almost lost in recordings. It\u2019s also a treat to watch a soloist who is such an integrated part of the music that she can\u2019t help quasi-conducting \u2013 dancing almost \u2013 during the orchestral sections.<\/p>\n

The final work was Beethoven\u2019s second symphony<\/em> (1803). Santtu chose to take the opening movement at a tempo nippy enough to sound crisp but measured enough to allow the detail to cut through. And the balance between winds and strings was sensitively managed. I have never before, incidentally, seen a conductor try to stop the applause at the end of a movement. It\u2019s fashionable not to mind it. But Santtu clearly does and I\u2019m unfashionably in his camp.<\/p>\n

The tenderly elegant larghetto felt like chamber music with lots of leaning and looking between front desks and Santtu\u2019s take on the scherzo was an appealingly delicate contrast.<\/p>\n

The whole symphony is smiley music, written in the year in which Beethoven, devastatingly, had to accept that his hearing really was going. How on earth did he find the strength to write this cheerful symphony? I beamed throughout but particularly in the concluding Allegro Molto: Beethoven as his most insouciant and full of joie de vivre. Santtu gave us a cheeky account of it \u2013 clearly enjoying the jokey exuberant fun with, for example, exaggerated dynamic contrasts. It wouldn\u2019t, perhaps, be everyone\u2019s cup of tea but I felt I was watching a man communicating directly with the composer and at one with every player in his orchestra.<\/p>\n

Susan Elkin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An esteemed music critic once said to me: \u201cWell we can\u2019t just go on listening to the same old pieces all the time\u201d. Well I can, happily – especially when they\u2019re brought off as sparkily as Santtu-Matias Rouvali did in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7121"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7125,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7121\/revisions\/7125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}