Few classical symphonies begin as forcefully as Haydn's last, the London Symphony. Continuing the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's current Haydn celebration, it was the perfect announcement of the amiably dynamic French conductor Marc Minkowski.
His own ensemble, Les Musiciens du Louvre, is one of the best period-instrument bands in Europe - and if he works them as hard as he did the OAE here, it must also be the fittest. These musicians are perhaps capable of playing with more precision, but scarcely with more vigour or buzz. In the Haydn, and later in Beethoven's Second Symphony, Minkowski was constantly pushing them to go that bit further. Climaxes would burst out at a new level just when you thought the crescendo couldn't get any louder. A couple of windmills of his arms would raise the softest playing to fortissimo in a moment, and he relished the stereo effects in the rumbustious finale of the Haydn that came from having the two violin sections on opposite sides.
Yet so much seemed effortless, like the zippy transition into the first allegro of the Beethoven, the swinging accents in that symphony's Scherzo.
And in the gentler passages, Minkowski's expansive phrasing ensured the momentum never slackened. Beethoven wrote this symphony only a few years after Haydn wrote his, and these assertive performances made obvious how much he owed the elder composer.
The two symphonies sandwiched Haydn's Cello Concerto in C, with Pieter Wispelwey the eccentric yet oddly enchanting soloist. Wispelwey has a lovely, open tone to call upon, but much of his playing was positively skittish, and faster passages in the first movement often disappeared in an impatient blather of bow. His cadenza, a concoction of plucked strings which threatened to turn into a Spanish guitar lament, was frankly dotty - but rather gloriously so.
His performance won't have been to everyone's taste. I don't think I imagined that the OAE cellos, fine players all and at least one of them an acclaimed soloist, looked a little unmoved by the concerto's enthusiastic reception, and by the encore: the Prelude from Bach's First Cello Suite, finely phrased but mostly in a brushy half-tone and with a leap to double speed in the middle. Still, in this, too, Wispelwey projected a mischievous but thoughtful musical curiosity. I've heard Haydn's concerto played more beautifully, but never with such a sense of fun.
