Daniele Gatti’s drypoint engraving of Beethoven

Francesco Ermini Polacci

Daniele Gatti has presented his first complete cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies as music director of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Four concerts, held alternately in the Sala Mehta and the Sala Grande, all greeted by the audience with jubilant enthusiasm. A tour de force, showcasing an Orchestra del Maggio that is dynamic, versatile and radiant in its sound; not always entirely flawless in its attacks and timing (partly due to the numerous changes in the ranks from one concert to the next), but nonetheless responsive to Gatti’s interpretation of Beethoven. And his is a lucid, austere Beethoven, continually illuminated in its instrumental details, with a solid and vigorous structure; at times even foreshadowing the symphonic style to come: Mahler, for example, as certain sharp phrasings and certain lashing sounds suggest.

Regular visitors to the Maggio are accustomed to Zubin Mehta’s Beethoven: poignant, unhurried, with rich, full-bodied strokes; Gatti’s interpretation, etched with a drypoint, proves to be more modern and crystal-clear. With a clear and decisive touch, and scores mastered by heart, Gatti pursues this vision of symphonic Beethoven with rigour and logical consistency: but when he goes too far in controlling dynamics, phrasing and pauses, when the sense of form takes precedence over that of content, the emotions are absent and the results prove uneven.

And so we hear a First Symphony that is lively and assured, with an extremely precise interplay of timbres, and a Fourth Symphony embellished by an elegant chamber-music style, though perhaps a little too restrained; a Seventh brimming with vital energy, where the emphasis on rhythm ensures a sense of order and where, at last, the Allegretto does not have its usual, misleading funeral march-like pace. But the famous Fifth is a disappointment, because Gatti’s extremely measured conducting fails to bring out the sense of dramatic conflict between opposing principles that runs through it – between good and evil, suffering and redemption, darkness and light: so that, in the transition between the last two movements, that fanfare does not sound like the resolution of the drama; it is not liberating, but merely an explosion of energy. The Sixth, the famous ‘Pastoral’, is recreated by Gatti in all its delicate poetry; it flows placidly and transparently, revealing gentle details in the instrumental dialogues.

Even more spot-on is the Third, the ‘Eroica’, which, alongside the Seventh, ranks among the finest performances in this complete cycle. For Gatti – who pairs it with a forceful Second Symphony that already possesses a distinctly Beethovenian character – imbues it with a tension whose driving force lies in the rhythm, weaving it into a sweeping narrative arc, in which we hear a solemn and at times furious Funeral March, and a Finale that is like a burst of flame, with Wagnerian grandeur; and, this time at last, truly cathartic. Finally, the Ninth, which benefits from a fine quartet of soloists (Mariangela Sicilia, Eleonora Filipponi, Bernard Richter, Jongmin Park) and the incisive performance of the Maggio Choir, conducted by Lorenzo Fratini. There is already a hint of the 20th century in this interpretation, tinged with unease, characterised by polished timbres, stripped of all bombast, with an Adagio that is all conciseness and purity of line. It is a tightly controlled interpretation, in which the Finale (resolved in accordance with Beethoven’s instructions) arrives as a resolute affirmation of certainties, yet without the joyful surge of that universal embrace invoked by Beethoven for all humanity.