Simon Rattle sure loves a challenge. This all-Schumann evening featured three “problem” works: the overture to a failed opera, a violin concerto deemed sufficiently disappointing that the composer’s executors ordered it locked away for a century, and a symphony written in the depths of depression. What’s more, he was conducting the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in an acoustic hardly conducive to the soft-grained tones of period ensembles. In the event, we needn’t have worried, but you have to admire his pluck.
The overture to Genoveva got off to a moody start. Rattle and the Freiburgers drew the listener in by tapping into the musical storytelling – the quartet of horns was especially striking – rather than relying on sheer volume. Closer to Mendelssohn than Wagner, it must have felt old hat in 1848, but here came up bristling with romance and chivalry.
Isabelle Faust was the soloist for only the sixth Proms performance of Schumann’s Violin Concerto (by comparison, the previous night saw the 103rd outing for Dvořák’s New World Symphony). Conducting without a podium, Rattle was an attentive partner, leaning into the first movement’s dark urgency while deftly shadowing Faust whose subtle rubato afforded a degree of flexibility to her otherwise determined sense of the work’s thematic architecture. Dynamic shading and delicate trills decorated the line as she calmly overcame a host of technical challenges. Sailing through the Elgarian central movement, she slid gracefully into a spirited yet wistful account of the polonaise finale. Rattle and the orchestra accompanied her with elfin lightness.
Schumann’s Second is the Cinderella among his four symphonies. Rattle didn’t shy away from the opening movement’s gloomier moments, or indeed its turbulence, but on the whole, this was a crisp reading where sunshine outweighed the showers. In the scherzo, conductor and orchestra highlighted the obsessive nature of the nagging principal theme, which in turn emphasised the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the contrasting trio. The slow movement, an endless flow of melody, exuded a noble melancholy before the curiously structured yet ultimately celebratory finale carried all before it. Exceptional playing, insightful and affectionate conducting, and not once did the period-instrument blend blur or smudge.
• Available on BBC Sounds until 12 October. The Proms continue until 12 September.
