Beethoven Symphony No. 4 in B flat, Op. 60; Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 National Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda National Symphony Orchestra NSO 0009 61:03 mins
Gianandrea Noseda’s Beethoven 5 doesn’t hang around. No portentous pauses interrupt its dynamic progress, pushing forwards with a thrilling impetuosity that drags the listener along.
With his big-boned National Symphony Orchestra of Washington (the booklet lists 26 violins, though I guess not all played in both symphonies), Noseda manages to achieve remarkable clarity. He even approaches Beethoven’s own swift and much-disputed metronome marks in some movements, which is tricky with a modern orchestra of this size and weight.
I admire Noseda’s trademark energy and drive, especially in the first bustling Allegro of the Fourth Symphony, but the issue is then how to pace the structures: the opening of the Fifth is so intense here that there is little more to give in the riveting coda of that first movement. It’s not all exhausting, however, and Noseda draws a very fine cantabile line from his strings and an expressive clarinet in the flowing Adagio of the Fourth, subtly shaped and with a tasteful touch of vibrato.
He never loses transparency and sharp-edged attack, but it’s possible to yearn for a less equally hammered three-quavers-to-the-bar in the outbursts of the Fifth’s Andante con moto. And in the Fourth, the Trio of the Scherzo could surely relax a little bit more, but the surprises at the end of that symphony are done with a fine sense of theatre.
You will not get here the modern sonic sophistication of, say, Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, but you will get an energising injection of sheer excitement – and at the end of the Fifth Symphony, a climactic final thwack from the timpani.
Nicholas Kenyon