The Orchestra of the Musical May of Florence gave two concerts in Athens under the baton of their principal musician, Daniele Gatti. On 1 March, the evening consisted exclusively of works by Beethoven, while the next day’s program consisted of works by French composers.

Only ten days earlier, in the same hall, conducted by their master Daniel Dods, the Lucerne Festival String Orchestra performed with a completely similar program: the Swiss performed Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with soloist Maria Joao Pires and the Third Symphony by the same composer, the Italians’ Fourth Piano Concerto with the Austrian Rudolf Buchbinder as a soloist and the Fourth Symphony, always by Beethoven. Comparisons were inevitable.

It wasn’t so much that the Italians came to Athens with a much larger ensemble, but that Gatti’s musical direction was moving in safe and secure waters, without risk. The result is an undeniably worthy performance, which in previous decades could have been praised for its uniformity of sound and the balance of its elements.

Just ten days earlier, the Lucerne Festival String Orchestra had performed in the same hall. Comparisons were inevitable.

Today, however, a number of readings have brought out so many interesting aspects of Beethoven’s writing, handling melodic lines with greater plasticity, paying more attention to alternating rhythms, highlighting interesting individual elements of orchestration, but which contribute to tension, and they add punctuation to the dramaturgy of the playing. Gatti’s reading seemed rather general, without a specific suggestion. Equally “classic”, impeccable, but also of limited interest was Buchbinder’s interpretation, which proved much more interesting in Autodesign, 1990s, vol. 4 Schubert, which he performed outside the program.

Although he had different requirements, the program for the second evening was similar. In Fauré’s “Pavan” 50, wonderful woodwinds stood out, but the plasticity of the phrasing remained limited. In contrast, the Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses, soloist of Camille Saint-Saens’ first Cello Concerto that followed him, offered a special interpretation, poetic and very elegant. It was clear that he needed to tell a story and convey emotions, and he had all the means, technique, skill, expression to do it.

Then Gatti immersed himself in the charm of the Spanish exotic “Empire”, the second of Debussy’s three “Pictures for Orchestra”. “Streets and alleys”, “Fragrances of the night” and “Morning of a festive day”, described by the composer, remained pale images, which were mainly based on the quality of the orchestra musicians.

The evening concluded with Ravel’s Bolero, equally defined by the individual contributions of the orchestra’s musicians. From the first day of its presentation, in 1928, to the present day, the work excites regardless of the interpretation, the boundaries of which are somehow (limited) by the composer.