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IT’S HARD TO THINK of anyone who knows Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony better than tonight’s conductor, Herbert Blomstedt (above). After seeing Blomstedt conduct this work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in August 2021, at the age of 94, New Yorker critic Alex Ross glowingly reported of “a performance that surged with vitality,” “an equilibrium between headlong force and melancholy lyricism,” and “a glorious payoff in the last pages of the finale, when the orchestra let loose with a frothing energy that bordered on animal joy.”
A few weeks earlier, Blomstedt brought that same “frothing energy” to Blossom Music Center, where he joined The Cleveland Orchestra in the same symphony. The performance produced equally stirring results for both musicians and the audience, which gave the reigning eminence of the podium a well-deserved ovation.
While a similarly illuminating rendering of Beethoven’s Seventh is undoubtedly in store for this weekend’s performance, it will almost certainly reveal fresh insights and novel ideas. Over his career, Blomstedt has shifted his perspectives on the composer, from his metronome markings and tempos to his interpretations of larger themes, often humming a passage to make a point. These adjustments come across in Blomstedt’s two recordings of the complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies (first with the Dresden Staatskapelle from 1975 to 1980 and later with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from 2014 to 2017).
“Every time we perform a classical work that we’ve played many times, it is new,” Blomstedt said. “It can never be the same. It’s like making bread, it will always be a little bit different.”
His fellow baker this weekend is his longtime collaborator and friend of the Orchestra, Emanuel Ax, who will help cook up an invigorating account of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18 on the first half of the program. Through the able hands of these two luminaries — one with a baton and the other at the keyboard — Mozart’s two-century-old concerto finds renewed vigor and resonance.
— Amanda Angel