Carnegie Hall: James Levine Conducts Beethoven and Schumann

There was a last minute replacement at Carnegie Hall yesterday afternoon as soprano Anna Netrebko appeared at the Met Orchestra concert conducted by James Levine in place of mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča who had been scheduled to perform Seven Early Songs by Berg but who had fallen ill the week before and been forced to withdraw.  Ms. Netrebko instead performed songs by Dvořák and Strauss.  The remainder of the program featured works by Beethoven, Carter and Schumann.

The matinee began with Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 (1801-1802).  The work is significant for having been composed at approximately the same time as Beethoven wrote his Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his two brothers in which he first acknowledged his increasing deafness and the impact that this affliction had had upon his life, even driving him to thoughts of suicide.  It's not a great leap then to consider the entire symphony as an affirmation of the composer's commitment to his music and his refusal to give in to despair.  Such a view would explain the bright cheerful character of the work as well as its deliberate departure from the Haydnesque form of the First Symphony.  This was a transitional piece in the most literal sense.  In its insistence on covering new ground it marked the composer's passage from his early to middle period.  Though not yet fully demonstrating the genius that would infuse the Third Symphony, it was amazingly innovative in every respect.  The lengthy introduction to the first movement, the use of a scherzo in place of a minuet, and the wealth of new ideas found in the fourth movement are all conscious breaks with tradition and with the expectations of the audience as well.  As such, the work was unappreciated by its first listeners who were thoroughly disconcerted by its novelty.  Ironically, it is today overlooked by audiences for not being as radical as the composer's later symphonies.  It  certainly received the attention it deserved at this concert however.  Levine's conducting was brilliant, and this was really one of the best performances of a Beethoven symphony I've heard.  Right from the opening bars of the first movement, Levine made it clear to everyone in attendance that this was the work of a genius who was striving mightily to leave behind his journeyman period and move to a higher, more heroic plane.

Following the Beethoven, Anna Netrebko came onstage to sing two works, Dvořák's "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka (1901) and Strauss's "Cäcilie," Op. 27, No. 2 (1894).  This choice was to me surprising as it contained none of the Russian pieces for which the soprano is best known.  I had heard Renee Fleming sing in Rusalka just last season at the Met; and that soprano is also, of course, justly famous for her interpretations of Strauss.  Ms. Netrebko's performance, if not as highly polished as one might have hoped for, was still excellent and enthusiastically received by the audience.

After intermission, the program continued with Carter's Three Illusions (2002-2004).  This is actually a collection of three miniatures, each of which had been composed separately, that only find their full meaning when performed together.  All three contain allusions to literary sources that the composer, who had majored in English literature at Harvard, obviously intended should be taken into account when listening to the music.  These range from Cervantes's Don Quixote, to Roman myth, to Thomas More's Utopia.  The first piece Micomicón, was dedicated to James Levine who had premiered the entire work with the Boston Symphony in 2005.

The afternoon ended with a performance of Schumann's Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61 (1845-1846).  As is well known, this was actually the third symphony Schumann managed to finish - the D minor, completed in 1841 was extensively revised in 1851 and eventually published as the composer's Fourth Symphony.  Schumann also made several other attempts in 1841 at symphonic composition but eventually abandoned these before proceeding in 1842 to focus primarily on the writing of chamber music.  To a certain extent, Schumann's difficulties with symphonic composition reflected his own fragile psychological state.  His Wikipedia biography remarks that during the time Schumann worked on the Second Symphony:

"...he suffered from persistent 'nervous prostration'. As soon as he began to work, he was seized with fits of shivering and an apprehension of death, experiencing an abhorrence of high places, all metal instruments (even keys), and drugs. Schumann's diaries also state that he suffered perpetually from imagining that he had the note A5 sounding in his ears."

But another difficulty lay in the status of the symphony itself following the passing of Beethoven and Schubert in the early nineteenth century.  By the mid-1800's, fewer symphonies were being composed and those that were brought to fruition, such as those written by Mendelssohn, were on a more modest scale than the grand works of the masters.  There may have been some doubt in Schumann's mind as to how viable a genre the symphony remained.  Not coincidentally, his protégé Brahms was also to have a great deal of trouble when later composing his own first symphony.  It may have been Schumann's discovery of Schubert's Ninth Symphony (he was shown the manuscript by Ferdinand Schubert while visiting Vienna in 1838) that convinced him of the possibilities the symphony still held for composers and inspired him to begin his own.

Whatever problems Schumann may have encountered in writing his symphony, the work itself triumphs over them.  The music is cohesively written and contains few traces of the mental anguish the composer was then experiencing.  In the final movement, he pays tribute to his wife Clara in his quotation of Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte ("To the Distant Beloved").  Once again, Levine's conducting was flawless.