Gardiner's question time

MUSIC; Philharmonia / Gardiner RFH, London

"Shine out fair sun, with all your heat..." was certainly an appropriate directive for a wet summer's evening. The words are "Anon. 16th century"; the musical backdrop, a mysterious and sparsely peopled soundscape dominated by tuned percussion. Sunday's Royal Festival Hall performance of Britten's Spring Symphony with the Philharmonia under John Eliot Gardiner raised both fire and hackles.

My own reaction acknowledged its pin-sharp focusing, bracing physicality, bright colours and stern refusal to linger. All charged keenly into the fray, with soloists Alison Hagley, Catherine Robbin and John Mark Ainsley relishing their birds' merry lay (the "Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta- woo!" of the third song). There was a glistening surface to "Waters Above", a truly "happy, dirty, driving boy" and a finely tensed account of Auden's sultry, war-tainted portrait of a windless night in June. Here Ainsley projected a honeyed tenor and potent poetic awareness, while elsewhere the contrast between play and repose, celebration and introspection, seemed to me expertly judged, and the Monteverdi Choir sang out with immense force and vitality.

But there were dissenting voices, especially among colleagues, in response to what some heard as coldness and detachment on Gardiner's part. And while not sharing their reactions to his Britten, I did have fairly strong reservations about his somewhat ruthless opening account of Elgar's Enigma Variations.

My reasons concern both Gardiner's individual temperament and the fundamental differences between Britten and Elgar. For whereas the Spring Symphony is cast more in prime colours than in pastels - its tonal architecture being somewhat akin (at least superficially) to that of, say, Janacek - Enigma resides among the richer, more homogeneous climes of German late- Romanticism.

Gardiner, of course, is a compelling exponent of all that is clear-sighted, tonally resilient and externally luminous (Britten delivers on all three counts), but he appears less than responsive to Elgar's centrally-heated lyricism and equivocal grandeur.

Even the theme-cum-first-variation, with its "romantic and delicate additions" seemed oddly halting, whereas "Nimrod" was more sleek than profound and "Dorabella" was quite deprived of her native elegance. In Variation 13, the "distant throb of the engines of a liner" as suggested by quiet drums came dangerously close to overpowering the clarinet, and although the finale had no lack of energy, Elgar's regal home straight (given complete with thundering organ pedals) emerged as strangely excessive - more a reflection of the conductor's manner than the composer's music.

The overall effect was of a highly personal set of variations turned public concerto-for-orchestra. True, bulldog Dan had great fun chasing his own tail, but Elgar's shaded nooks and crannies (Enigma is full of them) were impatiently bulldozed in the interests of a "fresh" view. It was the sort of performance one expects to hear from abroad, with everything played for all it's worth but without that maddeningly intangible quality that marks a truly "Elgarian" reading.

Of course, one naturally assumes that Gardiner himself will pooh-pooh all this as so much reactionary claptrap, but the bottom line has to be whether or not the music actually sets one's pulse racing - and, to be quite honest, on this occasion, it didn't.

Robert Cowan