BBC Proms: Faust, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Nelsons review - grace, then grandeur

Does the orchestra that sways together play together? Quite apart from their (reliably gorgeous) sound, the tight-packed strings of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig made quite a sight at the Proms as they collectively surged through key passages of Dvořák and Sibelius as if staging a succession of seated Mexican waves. 

That, of course, was merely the visible token of the seamless integration that their music director, Andris Nelsons (pictured below), sought and found in this concert that brought the Leipzigers’ legendary focus, density and polish to the Royal Albert Hall. All that fabled legacy from the great Saxon “Cloth Hall” band was duly delivered, above all in Sibelius’s Second Symphony. But I suspect that many in the packed crowd would have cherished even more the gentler heroics of last night’s stand-in soloist, Isabelle Faust. A late replacement for the injured Hilary Hahn, she made Dvořák’s Violin Concerto sound as tenderly compelling as in any reading that I’ve ever heard – and followed up with an ear-delighting encore of a mesmeric solo Fantasia in A minor by the London-born early 18th-century virtuoso, Nicola Matteis Jr.We began with what looked, on paper, a piece far from the venerable Leipzig tradition: (90th) birthday boy Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. However, it turned it that the rapt austerity of its bell-led descending string motif gave a firm early frame for that trademark timbre. Other string sections may sound heavier, or glossier, but this velvety depth proved, if anything, almost too elegant for Pärt’s spellbound lament for the distant idol that he never met.

In the Dvořák, Nelson’s vigilant guidance ensured that this potentially huge sound never threatened to overwhelm the solo voice. Brilliantly refined but never insipid, or harsh, at the top of the register, Faust (pictured below) could also command an earthy folksiness. She even swayed (and crouched) a bit herself. But this was a supremely elegant rusticity that married well with the equally classy voices of her instrumental partners when the violin talks one-to-one: Cornelia Grohmann’s flute, above all, mightily impressive all evening; or Clemens Röger, head of an imperious horn quartet. Faust’s adagio had a delicate, but never frail, cantabile grace throughout, while she lit the Czech furiant that drives the “allegro giocoso” with a dancing, mercurial skittishness. The Matteis encore proved a revelation (although Rachel Podger also plays his and his father’s work): glittering one moment, sombre the next, harmonically intriguing, almost a kind of mysterious bridge between solo Bach and Vivaldi. Nelsons’s Sibelius sounded magnificent from first to last, but still left questions in my mind. At over 48 minutes, it felt epic, relentless, occasionally becalmed: not so much, perhaps, because of funereal tempi at any one point but because the Latvian maestro made a long meal of pauses and so tended to break the flow of ideas. The upside of this monumental spaciousness was that we could hear and relish some sumptuously rich contributions from every corner of the band. If those charismatic horns stamped their quality on the whole piece from the first bars, then the lower brass – augmented by Niklas Horn’s gigantic tuba – snorted and crunched with thrilling commitment at every decisive entry. The woods (a special shout for David Peterson’s bassoon) had a matchless flavour and clarity of voice, with those flutes particularly sweet. And the strings, though full of sheen and warmth in their lyrical excursions, also managed the crucial pizzicato episodes with fierce aplomb.

Nelsons’s leisurely direction (though the final perforations were majestic) meant that we could hear in lavish detail just what a disconcerting piece this can be. Without that pair of grand tunes that rounds off the journey, it consists of beautiful gestures abruptly slapped down or broken up. Panic and emptiness haunt these Finnish forests (or Italian woods, in one interpretation), and Nelsons let us appreciate the lurching discontinuities woven into the whole trip.His great finale – one blazing anthem on top of another – was bombast-free, the dynamic shifts gripping but never melodramatic. It all felt, rightly, more like hard-won fulfilment than strident triumphalism. And, not least, it made room for another virtuoso turn by a true star of last night’s show (pictured above): ace timpanist Tom Greenleaves.

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