Jordi Savall in Salzburg: Beethoven with his tongue sticking out

Great cheers at the Salzburg Festival for Beethoven’s Symphonies 1, 2 and 4 with the guest orchestra Le Concert des Nations under Jordi Savall.

How did the no longer so young Ludwig van Beethoven finally introduce himself to the Viennese public as a symphonist in 1800? With a prank, a cheeky gesture. Even Joseph Haydn’s slow introductions usually began with a tutti chord that announced the key or at least gave a clear indication of it, before returning to it via harmonic detours and into the Allegro. He wanted to outdo this king of originality, the rebellious, self-absorbed “Great Mogul”, as Haydn nicknamed his student.

Beethoven boldly begins his First with a dissonance, the dominant seventh chord on C, which only much later turns out to be the root note of the whole – a dissonance that immediately resolves to F major: Ha! The symphony misses its second chance to reach C major in the very next bar, and ends up with a false conclusion in A minor. Only then does the music reach a regulated harmonic path.

Stumbling into F major staccato

When Jordi Savall sharply strikes the dominant seventh chord in the fortepiano at the beginning of this Adagio molto with Le Concert des Nations, many people have of course long expected this well-known gag. But the unexpected, real punch line is the laconic way in which the music immediately stumbles into an F major staccato in the piano. This time it sounded as if a balloon figure had been inflated with a confident blower – and yet collapsed miserably in the next moment. Even habitués had to grin.

Jordi Savall and Beethoven: The fact that the now 83-year-old musician, celebrated worldwide as a grand seigneur of early music, is devoting himself to the revolutionary of classical music does not mean that his love for the cello only began the day before yesterday. After all, Savall started out as a cellist, took inspiration from Pablo Casals and, of course, also played Beethoven. Only then did he embark on the unique journey that his love of the viola da gamba and the rediscovery of an older repertoire had led him on – and also the tracing of its often non-European influences. So it was only logical that Savall, after many great evenings during the Ouverture spirituelle in recent years with music from the past and present, for example by Arvo Pärt, as well as after a touching performance of Haydn’s “Creation”, was entrusted with a Beethoven cycle, divided into the 2023 and 2024 festival summers. (Incidentally, this can be experienced in a more compact form in the Vienna Konzerthaus in 2025, on four evenings in February and June.)

Really fresh tempos

Admittedly, in technical terms, this time the performance of the first and second symphonies, as well as the fourth, which follows on from Haydn again and in a more mature form, was not flawless in the House for Mozart: some intonation problems and the odd wind note that went off were noticeable. These blemishes were not really significant.

On the contrary: the spirit of adventure and discovery reigned, a bold courage to take risks, to break out of the comfort zone of the old instruments – in really fresh, but never exaggerated tempos that were far removed from the cliché of age-related slowness. With a string ensemble of ten first violins down to three double basses, the balance was just right with the woodwinds, brass and the brisk timpani – and yet truly pithy bass passages and unrelenting fortissimo tutti stood out from the whole. The madness of the Second, some bassoon comedy, but also the lyricism of the Adagio of the Fourth with a beautiful clarinet solo all meshed together: standing ovations.

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