Prometheus Overture - Beethoven Piano Concerto No 4 - Beethoven Symphony No 6 (Pastoral) - Beethoven
All-Beethoven programmes that include a popular concerto and symphony are among the greatest box-office draws open to orchestras. And given that modern taste runs to slightly reduced string sections in works from the early 19th century, a programme such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra presented at the National Concert Hall on Friday limits the costs, too - an important consideration when you take into account the extra expenditure involved in international touring.
But the ease of box-office success and the ready guarantee of audience pleasure at hearing such great music do nothing to leaven the artistic challenges presented by works such as Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto and Pastoral Symphony.
From the piano's uniquely evocative, unaccompanied opening (bars which, in the words of the great German pianist Wilhelm Kempff, "must not be played - they are only felt"), soloist Joanna MacGregor's approach was nervy and unsettled. Mostly she sounded too breezy for the music, simplifying its complex balances of introspection and affirmation.
For all its popularity, the Pastoral Symphony is actually one of Beethoven's most experimental creations. Its motivic obsessiveness and fondness for colonising new keys with what can sound like already stated conclusions make its longer spans difficult to sustain.
Conductor Petr Altrichter's approach had a sort of generalised sprightliness. This worked best in the Prometheus Overture. In the symphony, it left rather too many of the seams showing in the construction of the music.
The orchestral balance generally favoured the lean-toned string section. The horns achieved a welcome cutting edge, but the woodwind section frequently sounded recessed (the clarinets sustained the best sense of presence) and much of the textural interest in this most texturally interesting among Beethoven's symphonies was lost.
