Conductor Karina Canellakis on performing Beethoven

Tue 29 Sep, 2026

Karina Canellakis, our Principal Guest Conductor, tells us about her musical mentor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, why she chooses period timpani and brass instruments to perform Beethoven, and what's special about live performance.

Are there particular performances, recordings or experiences that have influenced your interpretations of Beethoven? 

My interpretation of Beethoven’s orchestral works is very strongly influenced by [conductor] Nikolaus Harnoncourt. I not only played under him as a violinist when I was in Berlin, but I also ended up replacing him with his orchestra, Concentus Musicus, in a cycle of Beethoven symphonies right after he passed away. That was towards the beginning of my life as a conductor, so it was an incredibly formative experience, which has shaped me ever since. I was able to work closely with the musicians in his orchestra and also with the types of instruments that they use there. 

Tell us more about those instruments…

Some of them are very, very old, some of them are self-made – literally, one of the oboists made his instrument out of wood from Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s garden, and it’s made to sound like a period instrument. But just the creativity and the sort of out-of-the-box thinking about sound, the way the timpanist plays, the natural trumpets [trumpets without valves]: all of this had such a strong effect on the way that I hear all of Beethoven’s symphonies. It’s affected the way that I now approach the rest of his output, too, for example the string quartets, as a violinist. It had such a huge effect on me.

But the London Philharmonic Orchestra isn’t a period instrument orchestra – how does that work? 

Whenever I do Beethoven with the LPO, we have these incredible trumpet players who are so amazing that they can actually switch mid-concert between modern valved trumpets and natural trumpets. That is extremely difficult to do. You have to play with a completely different technique and embouchure [the position of a brass or woodwind player’s mouth], and a different way of breathing, of attacking the note, of bending the pitch. I don’t know how they do it. It sounds so fantastic. And Simon, the timpanist, will also use these smaller, Classical-style drums that he has, which I adore. I just love that sound. He uses harder, more wooden-sounding mallets, which give a real crackle and clarity to what you hear coming from the timpani. 

You’re about to conduct Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with us – how would you describe Beethoven’s use of trumpets and timpani in that? 

Timpani and trumpets are very, very important punctuation in Beethoven’s music, and in all Classical repertoire. They were used relatively sparingly, and very often to add definition to a big chord or to the beginning of a symphony. Beethoven uses them in more soloistic ways. The transition between the third and fourth movements of the Fifth Symphony is a big timpani moment. So I’m looking forward to it so much. I love to do Beethoven with the LPO. 

A lot of people will be familiar with this symphony already from recordings…

The difference between a live performance and a recording is so huge. I think sometimes, in our modern society, with the ease of listening to something with one click on your phone, there’s a danger that we forget how important it is to actually have your physical being in the concert hall, with other bodies around you and other ears listening: this collective listening. What happens when people are all being quiet and listening at the same time? That’s also something that our culture needs very badly right now. 

This music is so riveting in the live concert hall, and you really can lose yourself in the moment. If you’re someone who knows the piece really well (maybe you’ve played it, or listened to it a lot, or heard many performances), you can notice even more the detailed choices being made by the orchestra and myself: the phrasing, the lengths of notes, the choice of tempi [speeds], of course, and the sounds that we’re trying to concoct. The whole interpretation of the piece is never going to be the same from one performance to the next. Whereas if you have your favourite recording, it’ll be the same every time. And why would you want that when you could have a live performance?