Vogt, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Gardiner, Royal Albert Hall

Gardiner gets all Romantic with a splendid Czech platter

by Igor ToronyilalicMonday, 30 August 2010

Sir John Eliot Gardiner 'seemed more comfortable and interested in indulging the romance than in sweeping it away'

Short of rolling around the podium like a delirious pig in a mudbath, Sir John Eliot Gardiner couldn't have hidden his enjoyment of the warm, plush sounds and well-upholstered vibrato of this wonderfully old-fashioned orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, less well at last night's Prom. As he embarked on one of the broadest, most unashamedly Romantic openings to Dvořák's Eighth Symphony I have ever heard, I wondered what the hell his years of all-out warfare on modern performance techniques had been about. Was Sir John doing a Kim Philby? Was the period movement's greatest propagandist defecting live on Radio 3? And might there be an encore of "Erbarme dich" for seven swannee whistles?

Prom 69: Stikhina, Czech Philharmonic, Bychkov – dark textures and powerful passions

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