When an evening of Mendelssohn and Schumann is on the program, one enters a familiar yet rich landscape. In the Koningin Elisabethzaal, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra demonstrated on Thursday, April 30, under the direction of honorary conductor Philippe Herreweghe, how clarity and vision can still provide direction to this music. With Kristian Bezuidenhout as soloist, the evening moreover acquired a pronounced and personal profile.
The overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) received an interpretation that immediately struck the right tone: light, brilliant, and natural in breath. Herreweghe deliberately kept the music lean and buoyant, allowing it to sparkle of its own accord. The strings provided a fluid foundation, while the woodwinds moved through the harmonic texture with an almost playful inevitability. Striking was how polished and precise the entries sounded, giving the impression of an orchestra that finds itself effortlessly. The fairy world thus unfolded in all its lightness and refinement, with a self-evident charm that immediately won over the audience.
That tension found a natural continuation in Mendelssohn's Second Piano Concerto – a work that is still too often treated as a stepchild, although in its melodic richness it possesses such direct charm. Kristian Bezuidenhout opted not for grand gesture, but for the intimacy of interplay, positioning himself from the outset as a partner within the whole.
His playing had something disarming about it: light, resilient and sustained by a soft, refined touch that gave the music an almost self-evident elegance. In the second movement, where the pianist is given more room to have his say, that approach became particularly tangible. The solo passages unfolded with a natural breathing, like a musical thought that lets itself be followed without emphasis – a moment of stillness, almost timeless in character.
In the faster sections, Bezuidenhout kept the discourse clear and playful, without losing sight of the line. Herreweghe meanwhile watched over an accompaniment that never became merely supportive: the orchestra enveloped the piano with a warm, transparent sound and let the dialogue develop organically. Thus emerged a performance in which soloist and orchestra found each other as if naturally in a shared musicality – fluid in breath and self-evident in coherence.
As an encore, Bezuidenhout chose the intimate Duetto from the Lieder ohne Worte by Felix Mendelssohn – a choice that could hardly have been more apt. The hall slowly faded to darkness, the light withdrew to around the piano, and everything stilled that remained of the concert bustle.
In that silence, Bezuidenhout let the two voices of the piece move like shadows around each other: seeking, touching, releasing again. The playing took on something fragile and yet inevitable, as if the music unfolded and dissolved before our eyes. The hall held its breath, caught in a moment that is difficult to grasp. It was such a conclusion that wants to add nothing, but sums everything up – and at the same time reminds us of how much unobtrusive beauty still lies hidden in Mendelssohn's piano music.
After the intermission, the emphasis shifted to the Symphony No. 3 'Rhenish' by Robert Schumann (1810-1856). Where this work is too often spun out in broad romantic brushstrokes, Philippe Herreweghe opted for an interpretation that remained taut from within from the outset: no rhetorical gesture for gesture's sake, but a steady search for coherence, breath and direction.
What was particularly striking was the almost self-evident familiarity between conductor and orchestra. Herreweghe barely needed to model the music: small, almost invisible gestures sufficed to make the sound breathe, shift and color. Thereby the symphony acquired from its very first entry a natural flow, clear and fluid, but with an undercurrent of tension that continued throughout the entire work.
Within that movement, a striking coherence unfolded across all sections. The more lyrical passages were given space and warmth, while the more animated moments remained light and transparent, without losing their direction. Subtle tempo shifts – small accelerations and decelerations – were not experienced as interventions, but were part of the natural musical breath.
In the fourth movement, with its hushed reference to the Cathedral of Cologne, that approach became almost tangibly concentrated. Herreweghe avoided any trace of monumental emphasis and kept the music rather sober and inward-looking, which gave it precisely a deeper intensity than is often achieved in this symphony.
Then the finale opened not as contrast, but as a logical continuation of what preceded it. The built-up tension found an outlet in movement and lightness, whereby the music redirected its energy outward without losing its inner coherence.
Thus emerged a Schumann that did not consist of separate episodes, but of one continuous breath – sustained by an orchestra and conductor that have clearly found each other in this score, and let it speak with self-evident clarity.
What ultimately characterized this evening was the consistent choice for clarity, balance and structure, without the romantic breath ever being lost. Everything was in service of a transparent reading that gave the music room to speak. It did not result in an overwhelming spectacle, but rather in a performance that convinced through its integrity and inner logic. Mendelssohn and Schumann sounded here not as vehicles for emotional excess, but as composers of nuance and precision.
Throughout the evening, the expressed playing pleasure of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra stood out: a palpable commitment to these scores, in which craftsmanship and enthusiasm reinforced each other.
Ultimately, it was not an evening distinguished by originality, but one of consistent choices. Herreweghe and his musicians sought no effect, but meaning; no grandeur for grandeur's sake, but music that came fully into its own in its own clarity – simple, honest and convincing in every detail.