Missing the beat

It was as though Damien Hirst had confessed a secret passion for Victorian watercolours, or Lars von Trier had admitted his life’s ambition to direct a rom-com. When it was announced that John Eliot Gardiner — pioneer of the early music movement — would conduct West Side Story at the Edinburgh Festival the reactions were extreme. What next? Harnoncourt conducts Hair? Les Arts Florissants sing Phantom?

But is the leap from Bach to Bernstein really that big? Both live or die with rhythm, with the dances that pulse and lilt and churn through them. Minuet or mambo — really, what’s in a beat? And then there’s texture. The frayed edges and rough, rasping beauty of historical performance are surely far closer to Bernstein’s angry, urban shout than much of what comes between. Listen to the crowd scenes from the St John Passion, a community baying for blood, then to the musical pack-violence of the choruses leading up to West Side Story’s ‘Rumble’.