Joshua Bell/Academy of St Martin in the Fields * * *
at Symphony Hall
Review by Christopher Morley
We are used to hearing Mozart piano concertos directed from the keyboard, and Bach violin concertos directed by the soloist. But the Beethoven Violin Concerto, with its big, symphonically beefy orchestral tuttis conducted from the bow of the violinist?
It was a brave experiment for Joshua Bell to try this with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, but I'm afraid it didn't work out.
Bell is a magnificent violinist, streets ahead of most of his generation. He plays with a sweetness of tone which never jars nor cloys, and his phrasing is fluent and persuasive. But all of this became secondary to what was almost a circus-trick, and which leaned heavily upon the services of the concertmaster, Harvey de Souza, who had to cue entries and maintain cohesion whilst Bell was dealing so brilliantly with Beethoven's demanding solo writing.
Everything had been scrupulously rehearsed, and attentive listening between every section of this scaled-down orchestra as well as the soloist was the order of the day, but this necessary sense of calculation left no room for spontaneity, no room for the frisson that the relationship on the podium between soloist and a conductor would have engendered.
The result was little poetry, an admiration that this could actually have happened (rather like Johnson's image of a dog preaching), and a disservice to Beethoven.
Purely orchestral items in this all-Beethoven programme worked somewhat better under Bell, now the concertmaster. The Coriolan Overture brought a cutting, intense string attack (to the detriment of woodwind balance), and the Seventh Symphony was zippy and exhilarating, though Bell often left off his playing to flap his bow at various instrumental entries.
