Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 - Kendall: O Flower of Fire

“When you’re conducting Beethoven, there’s all kinds of baggage because of the historically informed performance practices that are in the air,” Antonio Pappano tells Apple Music Classical. “I’m not steeped in that, but I’m aware of certain things. But what’s very important is that the transparency and the shock of the energy are there.” This might be a performance by a modern full symphony orchestra, but it fizzes with the lithe energy you’d expect from a period ensemble, the opening chords striking like hammer blows, followed by a stately introduction that yet keenly anticipates the exhilaration to come. Pappano achieves this, he reveals, through a limited use of vibrato and what’s known as “open strings” where violins, violas and cellos play their strings without using the fingerboard. The result is a leanness of sound that in turn enables a rhythmic tautness, Beethoven’s tripping rhythms crackling and snapping with palpable kinetic energy. “The music is so brazen and provocative,” says Pappano, “and the power of it is somehow menacing.” The second movement “Allegretto”, which Pappano describes as a “medieval dirge”, comes as a shocking contrast. “When it comes out fortissimo, it almost feels gothic, and the key is so relentingly gloomy until that clarinet comes in in the major—it’s the balm that’s necessary after all that austerity.” The “Presto” scherzo that follows provides another jolt of mood. “The scherzo is unexpectedly so full of verve. There’s an homage to the folk music of Austria and Germany in its trio, but it becomes some so grand. It’s like Beethoven is taking these familiar musical forms and just exploding them. It’s like a child with a toy that he’s discovering.” For the “Allegro con brio” finale, Pappano pushes the London Symphony Orchestra to its absolute limits. This is a movement where Beethoven most displays his great strength of will. “You have to deal with that,” says Pappano, “and see if you can measure up to it. I’m particularly happy that we had something left over in the last movement to really finish it. You reach what you think is the limit of human possibility about four pages before the end, and yet I think we managed to finish, and I think only a great orchestra can do that.” If Pappano has created something unique in this performance, there is evidently some element of mystery as to how he achieves his glorious results. “One of the LSO players came up to me,” says Pappano, “and said, ‘It’s really interesting. We’ve played this piece 40 billion times and we have our way of doing it. But you just ignore it and do it your way.’ And I think that’s good. But I don’t know what my way is, frankly!” Complementing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 is a new work commissioned by the LSO from the British composer Hannah Kendall. O Flower of Fire explores the coming together of myriad Black cultures on Caribbean sugar plantation fields, and is inspired by a line from the poem Voices by the Guyanese Caribbean writer Martin Carter. Kendall uses hair accessories, harmonicas and music boxes in her quest to paint her kaleidoscopic, unsettling portrait of slavery. Pappano brilliantly plays the score’s periods of calm against its vividly guttural sounds. “In the stillness, it’s really very beautiful indeed,” says Pappano, “and if Hannah asked the cellos to scream, then they needed to scream. There’s something primal in that.” The piece finishes as night falls, the sun sinking below the horizon to the accompaniment of droning harmonicas and whimpering strings. It’s a striking end to a powerful musical statement.