The Edinburgh festival's ambitious survey of the complete symphonies of Beethoven and Bruckner reached the halfway stage with performances of Beethoven's Fourth and Bruckner's Fifth, two equally radical works given contrasting performances by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic.
It's one of the big ideas of this year's International festival to present each symphony as a separate concert, and to sell every ticket in the Usher Hall for £10. However, the empty seats for Charles Mackerras's performance of the Beethoven suggested that the idea needs time to catch on with Edinburgh's traditional audience. However, the SCO's playing was full of fire and enthusiasm, catalysed by Mackerras's apparently superhuman energy. The music exploded into life in a thrilling transition from the slow introduction to the first movement, and the players relished the delicate orchestration of the slow movement, as a fragile clarinet line hovered above a mysterious timpani tattoo, like a distant memory of a military fanfare.
But for all its excitement, there were rough edges to the SCO's playing - particularly in the last movement, whose hurtling momentum became ragged and unfocused. Mackerras's concern for speed at all costs robbed the final moments of their wit and elegance.
There was playing of greater refinement from the Rotterdam Philharmonic and conductor Ingo Metzmacher in Bruckner's Fifth. Containing some of Bruckner's most startling music, from the quiescent string prayer of the opening to the gigantic fugue in the finale, the Fifth is a challenge for any orchestra, but Metzmacher's direct, unfussy approach turned the piece into a symphonic journey. Instead of wallowing in a cathedral of sound, he made the first movement a drama of Beethovenian energy, and revealed the aching lyricism at the heart of the slow movement.
The final movement was most impressive of all, a huge structure that culminated in a coda of shattering power, capped by a visionary chorale and the return of the melody from the first movement, telescoping the vast span of the whole symphony into a single passage of music.
