Blomstedt conducts Beethoven | Symphony No. 5 and Triple Concerto | Faust, Queyras, Helmchen

More than 200 years after its premiere at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the famous trio Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Martin Helmchen have congenially mastered the artistic challenge of Beethoven’s gemstone. Under Herbert Blomstedt’s sensitive direction, the soloists unite chamber music intimacy together with virtuoso sophistication – and prove once again that the Triple Concerto is an unduly underestimated, much too rarely programmed masterpiece. The composer’s fifth symphony – indeed, the hit of classical music – is better known. In Leipzig, however, Blomstedt succeeds in achieving an entirely new perspective of this work. In the culmination of his three-year, intensive reenactment of Beethoven’s cosmos, the impressive sound that characterizes Swedish grand seigneur’s conducting is heralded by transparency rather than showmanship, relevance instead of pathos, and tenderness in place of sentimentality.