LSO/Gardiner

There has been a lot of Beethoven in London of late, much of it high-profile and all of it high-class. At the South Bank, Daniel Barenboim's performances of the concertos with the Berlin Staatskapelle coincided with the OAE's ­symphony cycle with several eminent conductors. At the Barbican, meanwhile, John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony Orchestra have been bringing their cycle to a close. Unlike Barenboim, who compressed his material into a few days, Gardiner has spaced everything out over three years. He is, however, among the most exacting of Beethoven-ians, and the final concert of the series was remarkable. The Second Piano Concerto and the Pastoral Symphony were the main works. Maria João Pires was the soloist in the former, in a performance that refuted the usual comments that the piece is slight and atypical. Pires gives the impression of great fragility on a platform, though a streak of intellectual toughness balances her delicate style. She and Gardiner uncovered qualities of elation and nobility in the score that are uniquely Beethovenian, and her playing was just unforgettable – in particular the tense rigour she brought to the cadenza, her quizzical way with the final chords and above all, the unaccompanied, pedalled right-hand phrases that close the Adagio, in which time stood still. Restrained tension was also a characteristic of Gardiner's performance of the Pastoral, a superbly controlled, thrilling affair, as notable for its detail as for its cumulative emotional weight. The orchestral clarity was breathtaking, as was Gardiner's way with the slow dynamic gradations that are crucial to the work's impact. The performance was far from peaceful, and the storm that nearly wrecks the beauty of Beethoven's landscape was almost horrific in its violence. Superb stuff, close to perfection.