Colin Davis's LSO in good shape...
The London Symphony Orchestra's first concert was held on 9th June 1904, and the orchestra is making much of its centenary year - turning it into a whole 18 months of celebrations. These began in January and will conclude next summer, with the second of two gala concerts. There is certainly no lack of energy in the orchestra or in its principal conductor Colin Davis, who is now 76. If my arithmetic is right, the orchestra will have given well over 160 concerts within those 18 months - with Davis conducting more than 30 - and will have made several international tours, Davis himself leading them over three continents.
The orchestra has also sought to meet the demise of the classical recording industry by starting its own label, LSO Live, under which it can issue recordings of its concerts. It can do this because the players were willing to renounce advance recording fees, instead taking a share in the profits. In March 2003, the orchestra opened the renovated church of St Luke's in Old Street to house its education programme - a programme which, as the orchestra's publicity grandly has it, "has helped to gently change the LSO so that it exists not just to serve itself and its audience, but also to serve society" (and at some cost to itself, as the renovation cost rose to an unexpected ?18m and has driven the orchestra into deficit).
More importantly, the orchestra is actually on pretty good form at the moment. It has never lacked a strong brass section (sometimes rather too strong, especially within the confines of the Barbican), but the wind and the strings are now capable of both projection and refinement. Moreover, although Davis became the principal conductor in 1995, there are, perhaps unusually, no signs of fatigue or strain in his relationship with the players: quite the reverse, since they seem at their most alert under his baton. Davis's repertoire is extraordinarily wide-ranging. He is known, of course, for his Berlioz and Sibelius, but in the last year, for instance, he has elicited a wonderfully atmospheric yet exact performance of Ravel's Daphnis and Chlo?; shown, in accompanying Mitsuko Uchida, that the LSO can play Mozart idiomatically; given readings of the classical repertory - Beethoven's 8th symphony, Schubert's Unfinished - which have been satisfyingly, if unfashionably, massive and yet rhythmically alert; and most recently, given concert performances of Verdi's Falstaff that were somehow both suitably genial and genuinely exciting.
...shame about the gala concert
In the light of all that, it would perhaps be unfair to make too much out of the first of the two centenary gala concerts, given on June 9th at the Barbican. Predictably, the high point was Mozart's concert aria "Ch'io mi scordi di te" under Davis, with Susan Graham and Alfred Brendel (a performance which promised great things for the Covent Garden's Ariadne auf Naxos, where Graham is due to sing the part of the composer and Davis to conduct). It was simply crass, though to follow this with Dave Brubeck's performance of something that sounded like the soundtrack to a bad television movie. There was an unfortunate symbolism too in Daniel Harding's appearance as conductor. Harding, still only 28, has worked closely with Claudio Abbado, the LSO's chief conductor from 1979-88, and has already made a reputation as a Mahler conductor. It was Abbado's 1985 festival "Mahler, Vienna and the 20th century" that helped to re-establish the artistic reputation of the LSO after its move to the Barbican. In Richard Morrison's recent book on the orchestra, one of the players from that period remembers the tensions between the serious work demanded by Abbado and the days spent recording film scores. So what was Harding asked to conduct for the gala? Something to mark Abbado's landmark 1985 festival? No: the main title from Star Wars.
The unhappy symbolism of that was reinforced by the LSO's concert four days later when, as part of the Barbican's series to celebrate Bernard Haitink's 75th birthday, they gave Mahler's 6th symphony. Last year, Haitink gave this work himself with the European Union Youth Orchestra in what was probably the highlight of the Proms. Admittedly, this is rather an old youth orchestra (its players are right on the edge of their professional careers), but the LSO's performance sounded decidedly undercooked in comparison - and in comparison also to the earlier concerts in this Haitink series with the Concertgebouw and the Vienna Philharmonic. The LSO played accurately, intensely and very loudly, but there was little of the refinement of texture which is needed if this symphony is not to sound hectoring, and which is unlikely to be achieved with such a brief rehearsal time. (Coincidentally, Abbado, returned to Berlin the week before for Mahler's 6th and had significantly more time to rehearse the Berlin Philharmonic than the two days Haitink was given in London.) The EUYO last year memorably realised Haitink's detailed and powerful conception of the work. The LSO this year did not.
The LSO is a very fine orchestra, and it is probably now more technically accomplished than it has ever been. We should welcome the fact that Clive Gillinson, its managing director, is so full of ideas about its future and even its place in the community. There must be a concern, however, that with the number of concerts it does, the orchestra is in danger of spreading itself too thinly, and that if it is to make the most of its players' accomplishment and to evolve from a very fine orchestra to being a great one, a major financial priority must be to increase the proportion of its time available for preparing its real work.
