Yesterday afternoon, I walked down to David Geffen Hall to hear the first of two concerts given by the Budapest Festival Orchestra under the baton of its music director Iván Fischer. Both concerts featured all-Beethoven programs and thus gave me an opportunity to hear several of the master's symphonies performed side by side.
The concert began with the Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21. By 1800, the year Beethoven's first symphony premiered at the Burgtheater, Vienna had already, thanks to Haydn and Mozart, established itself as the musical capital of Europe, a position it would continue to hold well into the twentieth century. Beethoven had already been a resident of the city for several years at this time, having arrived from Bonn in 1792, but had hitherto been known primarily as a pianist. The 1800 concert is significant because it marked Beethoven's first serious attempt to establish his reputation as a composer to be reckoned with. He was none too subtle in the manner in which he went about accomplishing this. First, he included works by both Haydn and Mozart on the same program, thereby implying that his own works were strong enough to stand beside theirs. To drive the point home, though, it was necessary that Beethoven meet his predecessors on their own ground. Recognizing very well that it was in the creation of symphonic works that the two earlier composers had reached their zeniths - indeed, it was Beethoven's teacher Haydn who had virtually invented the genre as we now know it - Beethoven completed the symphony he had begun sketching as early as 1795 and made ready to present it to the audience that would best be able to appreciate it. This included the work's dedicatee, Baron van Swieten, a musical connoisseur if ever there was one. The baron had also been a patron of Haydn and Mozart and the dedication served to enhance Beethoven's aim of taking his rightful place beside them. As might be expected, the composer did not stray far from the Classical models of his two predecessors but instead deliberately followed the traditional four-movement form in order to decisively demonstrate his own competence at it. He varied the formula only enough that he could not be accused of lacking originality. So, in the opening of the first movement, there is the "joke" as the orchestra searches for the right home key; likewise, the third movement menuetto is marked allegro molto e vivace so that it becomes in effect a scherzo, still another of Haydn's inventions. It is unfair to judge this first symphony in light of the eight that followed it; taken for what it was at the time, the Op. 21 is a significant work that announced the accession in Vienna of a major compositional talent at the dawn of a new century.
The next work was the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 (1805-1806). The concerto is a world away from the Op. 21. In the scant eight years that separated the public premieres of the two works Beethoven had left behind his first somewhat derivative efforts as a composer and triumphantly entered his middle "heroic" period. Now he was not so much concerned with being in the same company as Haydn and Mozart as he was in showing his audience how far he had surpassed them. Unlike the 1800 concert, the 1808 marathon at the Theater an der Wien featured only works by Beethoven, not that there was room for anything else. To mark how far he had come, Beethoven left behind in this concerto the traditional interrelationship between piano and orchestra. Instead of having the orchestra begin the work with a flourish, Beethoven had the unaccompanied piano softly introduce the main theme with the orchestra following behind and answering. He also divided the orchestra into sections with brass and percussion appearing only in the final movement. These new roles for soloist and orchestra were most evident in the andante con moto when the two played in confrontation with one another rather than in support. Arthur Rubinstein once said of this second movement that it had been "written by a man in mortal fear." And so it must have been because this was the last time Beethoven, plagued by ever encroaching deafness, performed in public as a pianist.
The soloist at this concert was Richard Goode whom I consider one of the finest musicians now active. His conservative style, one that eschews any pyrotechnics and puts the music first, was well suited to this work with its nuanced interplay between soloist and orchestra. He did not play loudly but every note was crystal clear. It was as fine an interpretation of Beethoven's piano music as I've heard.
After intermission, the program concluded with a performance of the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1804-1808), one of the most celebrated works in the entire repertoire. Placing its performance after that of the Op. 58, with an intervening intermission, mimicked the program of the 1808 premiere of both works and made it possible for me to better guess the feelings of the Viennese audience who encountered them for the first time. Only three years before, at the same venue, these music lovers had been shocked by the premiere of the Symphony No. 3, the majestic Eroica, and were no doubt anticipating something equally unusual at this performance. To an extent, they were disappointed. The Op. 67, despite the dramatic opening that has fate knocking on the door, was in traditional four movement form and much shorter than the Op. 55. It is only as one listens that one realizes that this brevity was the deliberate result of the composer's ability to concentrate his musical material into a piece that does not unwind so much as it explodes. There is in it a persistent anger, amounting to fury, that permeates each movement and gives the work its character. Certainly not one to meekly accept his fate, Beethoven here railed against the curse of his deafness with every ounce of strength he could muster. In this regard, the composer's choice of C minor as the home key is telling. It invariably was used when Beethoven wished to create a sense of tempestuousness and near chaos as he did here. The finale is particularly violent and suggestive of mortal combat. It is as if the Romantic hero finally confronted his nemesis face to face and sought to overcome it once and for all.
In the last movement of the Fifth, Iván Fischer brought onstage members of the Juilliard and Bard orchestras. It must have been a thrilling moment for them. The BFO is one of the finest ensembles now performing and I consider myself extremely lucky whenever I have an opportunity to hear them. They outdid themselves yesterday afternoon and well deserved the rapturous standing ovations that followed the conclusion of the concert. I can't think of any orchestra, other than the Berliner Philharmoniker, that has performed Beethoven with as much power and assurance.
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