https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.wordpress.com/2021/07/20/daniel-lebhardt-the-simple-grandeur-of-j-s-bach-at-st-marys/

Daniel Lebhardt is an Emperor for the night at the Barbican with the RPO under Christopher Warren Green.A superb performance of great clarity and precision with a crystal clear sound that even in the quietest of passages reached the furthest corners of this vast hall.
Aristocratic nobility as befits a true Emperor with all the dynamic rhythmic drive of a dashing young virtuoso.

Cheered to the rafters (where I was seated in ‘paradiso’ or ‘Gods’ faites vos jeux) he was asked by the orchestra themselves to play some more.
The Beethoven Bagatelle op 126 n.3 was of searing beauty with great waves of sound just interrupting this mellifluous landscape depicted by this superb musician.He knew how to interpret Beethoven’s final pedal points and created an atmosphere that entranced even this festive audience.
Minutes of aching silence,such were we bewitched,before the deluge of cheers and even cat calls just demonstrating what magic atmosphere a real artist can create.
This was a Raymond Gubbay event bringing music to the masses who in fact were far more attentive than the usual Barbican ‘sophisticated’audience that more often than not clap between movements.
Hats off to Raymond Gubbay for offering such an opportunity to young musicians at the start of their career.

As a curtain opener to the much vaunted Beethoven’s ninth it did In fact steal the show from a Choral Symphony that seemed to lack a clear architectural line and consequently the burning rhythmic tension that is only released in the final triumphantly joyous bars.