We all knew that Roger Norrington is one of the podium’s most authoritative spokesmen for authentic performance practice in works of the Classical and Romantic periods. We also knew, from his previous appearance here in 1993, that he is a master at persuading modern symphony orchestras there are other, valid ways of approaching old music than what they learned at the conservatory.
What we perhaps didn’t know, but found out at his concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Thursday at Orchestra Hall, was his puckish refusal to take himself all that seriously. He all but kicked up his heels in the stylized Baroque dance movements that make up Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3.
But the most telling moment came midway through his reading of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. Norrington had just launched into the scherzo movement when he had mentally jumped ahead to the finale and was beating Allegro molto when it should be only Allegro. So he stopped the orchestra and, before resuming at the proper speed, confessed to the audience he had done the same thing once before with the Israel Philharmonic, “but they didn’t even notice.”
If his Beechamesque drollery was refreshing, so was his music-making. Our guest conductor turned the CSO into a modern-instruments version of his London Classical Players as he put three examples of High Baroque and Classical repertory under the microscope of “period” inquiry.
Placing the most unrelievedly dour of all Haydn’s symphonies, No. 49 (“La Passione”), between the sunny D Major of Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite and Beethoven symphony, the guest conductor made each score speak with a renewed vigor. He enforced brisk tempos that never seemed rushed because rhythms were so exactly articulated. And he divided his violins across the podium, a Classical seating plan that made Beethoven’s dialogue effects positively crackle.
Norrington’s way with the Haydn was to give harmonic tension and release due weight within forward-moving tempos. Tone color became a vital expressive element. The pair of horns approximated the raw timbres of hand-stopped horns–one of several period touches that distinguished this performance, the CSO’s first in 28 years.
The Beethoven Second Symphony is too often unfairly shrugged off as inferior to the weightier masterpieces that succeeded it. Norrington’s bold, bracing treatment was needed to put the piece in its proper perspective as both a climax of 18th-Century symphonism and a bridge to the 19th Century.
Haydn’s shadow fell over the brusque outbursts and rude humor of the opening movement. The fiery first chord, those stinging horns and rumbling timpani sounded portents of the Romantic revolution just ahead. Norrington observed all the repeats and his tempos were orthodox save for a relatively fast, but comfortably flowing, Larghetto. Wonderful performance.
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The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.
