Carnegie Hall’s last full presentation of Beethoven’s symphonies — Simon Rattle leading the Berlin Philharmonic five years ago — made a case for why this stale cycle should be retired. David Allen, who reviewed the concerts for The New York Times, wrote that climbing this musical mountain again just “because it’s there,” as George Mallory said of Everest, simply is no longer enough.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Carnegie from bringing Beethoven back to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth, with about a fifth of its season devoted to the sonatas, quartets and concertos. And the symphonies: The hall has programmed not one cycle, but two. The first, led by John Eliot Gardiner with his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, concluded on Monday; the next, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, begins March 13.
The twins are far from identical. Conductors can take any number of approaches to a cycle, like commissioning new works as curtain-raisers — which, let’s be honest, is unfair to contemporary composers — or surrounding each symphony with other pieces that illuminate its inspirations and innovations. Mr. Gardiner offered the symphonies in order; Mr. Nézet-Séguin mixes them up, with the First on the same program as the Ninth.
But most important is a fundamental contrast between the orchestras: Philadelphia is a modern ensemble, while the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique is made up of period instruments, assembled and played to approximate Beethoven’s music as it might have been heard in the early 19th century.
That, it turns out, is exactly what we needed in this year of Beethoven saturation. Mr. Gardiner’s cycle, performed over five evenings, amounted to a reintroduction to symphonies that felt smaller and more transparent than usual. It was a corrective portrait, reframing the scowling demigod of musical myth as someone, well, human — rational, and more interested in optimism than anguish.
Beethoven’s symphonies don’t really need more than a chronological presentation. They are singular works — but, imbibed in close sequence, they reveal recurring fixations with certain rhythms and bits of material, as well as the grand trajectory of a composer who was constantly mastering established forms, then clearing new paths.
By playing the symphonies on period instruments, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique truly justifies yet another cycle. Even if the group’s historically informed approach is hardly as radical as it was 30 or 40 years ago, it’s the first time Carnegie has hosted a period cycle, as well as a welcome reminder of what else is possible in a city where the New York Philharmonic continues to treat these works as comparatively mushy and Mahlerian.
(Carnegie was the second stop in Mr. Gardiner’s tour of the symphonies. Next is Chicago, starting Thursday, then London in May. If you can’t hear them live, he and this orchestra made an essential recording for Deutsche Grammophon.)
Mr. Gardiner’s style refreshingly let any greatness in the music speak for itself. Beethoven doesn’t introduce the dynamic “fff” — an indicator more hyperbolic than practical — until the bacchic finale of the Seventh Symphony; and I really didn’t hear it until then, instead of the usual sites of super-loudness like the “Eroica” or the Fifth in most performances. Mr. Gardiner never imposed grandeur on these scores, preferring to emphasize the lucidity afforded by a period orchestra.
His instruments — which are far more difficult to control than modern versions, so you can forgive a botched note here and there — come off as blunter than the ones we’re used to, but also cleaner. Their timbres, particularly in the winds and brasses, are distinct, blending less smoothly than in orchestras today yet affording stereoscopic clarity. In slow movements, you notice how little vibrato the strings use; though the resulting sound is sometimes chalky, typically sentimental passages are recolored with a lightness that doesn’t skimp on lyricism.
Mr. Gardiner’s tempos were fleet, especially in the finales, but didn’t seem hurried. His Ninth Symphony clocked in at exactly an hour; compare that with the 74 minutes CDs are said to have been designed to hold to accommodate the work. Presented this way, the symphonies had surprises to offer those — like me — who were raised on more lush, slow, Romanticized performances and recordings.
The First still gives the impression of a young composer who understands the form and is pushing, not quite hard enough, against the confines of its conventions. In what made for an ultimately mild-mannered evening, Mr. Gardiner sandwiched the work between other early Beethoven pieces, including excerpts from the ballet “The Creatures of Prometheus” and, in the revelation of the program, the hair-rising concert aria “Ah! perfido,” with the soprano Lucy Crowe.
If Beethoven’s artistry blossoms with the salvo of the Second Symphony, so too did this orchestra, giddy in the first movement and rambunctious by the Scherzo. Mr. Gardiner, who has led the ensemble since its founding three decades ago, was deceptively cool at the podium, able to communicate this work’s volatility with minimal gestures that unleashed swerves in sound. In this cycle, for once, the impeccably crafted Second overshadowed the “Eroica” that followed, here a frustratingly grandiloquent piece, lacking the cohesion to carry its mighty ambitions through the finale.
Mr. Gardiner’s approach to the Fifth rebelled against its reputation, presenting the work not as a lofty drama of fate and triumph, but as a study in almost primal rhythmic obsession and economy, achieving even more powerful concision than the Fourth. And the “Pastoral,” which is easy to read as folk-inspired tone painting, was here more subtly evocative than straightforwardly illustrative. This Seventh and Eighth revealed Beethoven as an often joyful master of genres; what is the Ninth Symphony’s “Ode to Joy” if not Beethoven’s proof that he could write an anthem on par with “La Marseillaise”?
Mr. Gardiner was meticulous, sure, yet he also left room for captivating inhibition. Take that “Ode to Joy,” in which the orchestra was joined by the Monteverdi Choir and soloists including Ms. Crowe and the bass Matthew Rose, a late replacement borrowed from “Agrippina” at the Metropolitan Opera.
Throughout the cycle I had kept detailed notes during each performance. But when the Ninth, a piece I would normally shrug off as overplayed, came to a galvanizing end, I looked down at a blank sheet of paper and realized I had spent the entire finale with my eyes on the stage.
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