Saturday night’s Cleveland Orchestra
concert at Severance Hall, an all-Beethoven program led by Franz Welser-Möst,
was an exercise in profundity, frustration, and exaltation. When it comes to selling classical music
concert tickets, you can’t go wrong with Beethoven. I didn't see one empty seat in the house,
which augers well for the future.
The String Quarter in A minor, Op. 132, is one
of my favorite of Beethoven’s works. It
was composed in 1825 following an extended illness during which Beethoven
nearly died. I vividly recall the first
time I heard it: I was 17, riffling through the many records in my
grandmother’s basement, and came across on old, scratchy, mono LP of the piece
played by the Budapest String Quartet. I
placed the LP on the turntable, lowered the stylus, and was riveted by the work
from beginning to end. After the record
was over, I sat speechless, for at least 15 minutes. It is a challenging and emotionally draining
piece.
Saturday night was the first time I’d
heard it performed by a full string section – in an arrangement by Welser-Möst
himself, which tastefully augmented the cello parts with the double-bass. (Welser-Most previously led the orchestra in
an arrangement of Beethoven’s Grand Fugue for strings in summer 2013.) Paradoxically, by performing the work with
full strings, the subtleties of Beethoven’s writing were made even more
apparent: the work’s stark opening, the constant push and pull of the tempo,
and the many unexpected turns the music takes.
There are certain passages – particularly in the miraculous slow
movement – where Beethoven avoids the tendency of many composers to simply copy
& paste a passage from one phrase to another – moving it into a different
key, and instead takes the music in another, unanticipated and unanticipatable
direction. This is the work of a man who
has stared into the face of death and lived to tell the tale. A moving experience, and the audience was
blessedly quiet.
Following intermission, pianist Yefim
Bronfman took to the stage for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor. Now I must confess, this is my least favorite
of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos (unless one includes the rarely played
arrangement of his Violin Concerto for piano and orchestra, in which case the C
minor is the 2nd least favorite).
Beethoven, on hearing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor, is claimed to
have said “We shall never have an idea to compare with that!” Eventually, Beethoven did put comparable
ideas to paper, but they’re not in this Concerto. The work is, aside from the minor key,
essentially in the style of his first two Piano Concertos – lacking the
subtlety of the G major Concerto and the grandeur of the so-called Emperor
Concerto – the last two concertos. This
is not to say it’s a bad work, but the themes are standard (although the opening
movement’s main theme is a bit defiant for 1804), they are developed in rather
ordinary ways, and the work tests neither a performer’s musicality nor
technique. Bronfman’s rendition, then,
was a very ordinary performance of a highly overplayed work: Nothing
offensive, and nothing particularly noteworthy – the pianist’s dynamics never
varied much from mezzo-forte and tempos were the dead center norm. The
orchestra under Welser-Möst provided a detailed, sympathetic accompaniment, only marred by constant coughing from an audience
which had been so silent during the Quartet.
The final work was the Fantasia for piano, vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra,
Op. 80 – popularly known as the Choral Fantasy. This work was originally written as a crowd
pleasing capstone for a monster concert Beethoven arranged in 1808. As the title indicates, the work puts in
everything but the kitchen sink. It
starts with an extended piano solo which is said to have been similar to the
improvisations with which the young Beethoven thrilled audiences during his
early career – when he was more known as a pianist than a composer. From there, a theme which anticipates the
“Ode to Joy” theme is heard and developed by piano and orchestra – after which
vocal soloists and then choir enter and bring the piece to a rousing
conclusion. Hearing this performance, I
was reminded of something Laurence Olivier said: “Never show an audience your
top, because then you have nowhere else to go.”
Welser-Möst skillfully held orchestra and chorus in check until a few
bars before the final “und Kraft” at the end – which knocked the audience’s
proverbial socks off.
