The Philharmonia, which has been plagued all year by conductors who cancel at the last minute, is once more having a rough time of it. The orchestra has just kicked off the second chunk of its Beethoven retrospective: a massive, three-part undertaking that was originally planned for the veteran German maestro Wolfgang Sawallisch. However, Sawallisch pulled out of last spring's concerts due to illness. Now he has done so again, leaving the orchestra to find substitutes at short notice. Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and Charles Mackerras take over later in the week; on this occasion Sawallisch's replacement was Frans Brüggen.
On paper this looked like an uneasy combination. Brüggen is one of the pioneers of period practice. The Philharmonia uses conventional instruments, and is best known for its high-romantic, at times reverential, approach to Beethoven. However, the end results, for the most part, confounded expectations. Brüggen's introduction of elements of period technique - vibrato-less strings and wind - led to performances of the Coriolan Overture and the Seventh Symphony that seemed to expose the nerves and sinews beneath the music's flesh.
The overture seethed with compressed tension as Coriolan's theme buckled and fragmented in the face of the aristocratic, wheedling melody with which Beethoven conveys Volumnia's manipulation. The symphony, meanwhile, was relentless in its impact. Brüggen emphasised the shafts of darkness that intrude upon the elation. His approach spoke volumes above all in the slow movement, in which the multiple lines of counterpoint crossed and criss-crossed with Bach-like clarity and profundity.
The Triple Concerto proved problematic, however. Brüggen had inherited Sawallisch's original line-up of soloists - violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, cellist Heinrich Schiff and pianist Andreas Haefliger - and it was soon apparent that stylistic clashes were in the offing.
Zimmermann and Schiff tailored their natural exuberance to suit Brüggen's approach, with the violinist filing his weighty tone down to a ravishing thread of sound and the cellist playing with lyrical restraint.
Haefliger, however, seemed determined to go his own way, regardless of all that was happening around him: he played with a combination of grand romanticism and cloying sweetness. His performance tore the work in two and marred what was otherwise an exceptional evening.
