On Sunday afternoon I walked down to David Geffen Hall to hear the first concert on my Great Performers subscription. The matinee performance featured Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra performing major works by Bach, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff.
The program opened with Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067 (1738-1739). There are several points to be made in any discussion of Bach's Orchestral Suites. The first pertains to the date of composition. That shown above, 1738-1739, is derived from the autographs of flute and viola parts the composer wrote out during his residence in Leipzig. It's likely, however, that the works were composed much earlier, most likely circa 1720 when Bach was Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold in Köthen. The second question concerns the size of the orchestra for which Bach composed his suites. Recent scholarship has proposed that Bach intended that only one instrument perform each part, an arrangement that would obviously limit the ensemble to a small chamber orchestra, and that was exactly how it was performed on Sunday afternoon with only the conductor and seven musicians using period instruments present onstage. The third question concerns the grouping of the works. There's no indication that Bach ever intended the four suites as a single set. Rather they were most likely composed singly at different times and then revised by the composer as he saw fit over the course of years. The numbering of the suites is then purely arbitrary. Answers to the above questions are complicated by the fact that the works were not published until 1853, more than one hundred years after the death of the composer.
Orchestral suites were extremely popular during the Baroque period - Telemann is thought to have written hundreds of which 135 have survived - so that it's a testament to Bach's seriousness of purpose that he composed only four of these lighthearted works. In general, they follow French models, particularly those of Lully, as can readily be determined by the titles of the dance movements contained within them. Bach, however, also highly respected the work of Italian composers, chief among them Vivaldi, and those Italian influences can be heard in the present piece's Sarabande.
The next work was Beethoven's majestic Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 (1800) with guest artist Dénes Várjon as soloist. Although 1800 is routinely given as the work's date of composition, it obviously wasn't completed in its final form at that time. Beethoven most probably composed it to be performed at his first Vienna concert in April 1800 but at the last moment substituted another of his early concertos in its place. Even at the Op. 37's premiere three years later in 1803 the piece still lacked a written piano part with Beethoven playing it from memory. This is not mere quibbling over dates as Beethoven in 1803 had already entered his middle period and was a far different composer than he had been in 1800 when still deeply under the influence of Classical masters Haydn and Mozart. The concerto as finally premiered had to have had a different character than that which Beethoven had originally conceived.
Beethoven had modeled the Op. 37 on Mozart's Concerto in C minor, K 491, but it's important to note that Beethoven only used Mozart's work as a stepping off point. Though in the same key, Beethoven's concerto differs in many respects from its predecessor. This is most evident in the slow movement largo in the distant key of E major, early evidence of the composer's predilection for sudden jumps to remote keys. In this case, the audience must have been startled by the unexpected move.
Pianist Dénes Várjon, of whom I have to admit I had never previously heard, did a superb job as soloist. A student of György Kurtág, he has won numerous awards in Europe but has not yet received the recognition he deserves here in the US. He played the Beethoven with a sure but light touch that won him a standing ovation. He then returned to perform an encore that may have been a selection from Bartók's For Children.
After intermission, the program concluded with a performance of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 (1906-1907). This is a lush romantic piece whose music swirls about the audience in a heartfelt plea to the emotions. As stated in Carnegie Hall's program notes to a concert I had previously attended:
"... the Second Symphony is an expansive summation of Rachmaninoff's early style. The second subject of the finale and the main theme of the slow movement are two of the most extended tunes he ever wrote, and the soulful opening movement is a continual stream of brooding melody."
The work is also famous for being Rachmaninoff's second attempt at symphonic writing after the disastrous reception of his First Symphony in 1895. Although he had by then composed his Second Piano Concerto, following a long period of psychoanalysis and hypnosis, Rachmaninoff still needed seclusion in which to work out his ideas and so resigned as conductor of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and moved with his family to Dresden. The Symphony No. 2 proved a great success and still remains one of the composer's most popular works. It was actually through this symphony that I first came to appreciate the greatness of Rachmaninoff's music.
To my mind, the Budapest Festival Orchestra is one of the world's finest ensembles and their music director Iván Fischer a superb leader at a time when there is a scarcity of top notch conductors. Anyone who has ever seen this combination perform Bartók's music, as I have, knows that there are no more authoritive interpreters of that composer's works than these musicians. On Sunday they demonstrated that they are equally at home with the wider European repertoire. Their performance of Rachmaninoff's Second was simply the best I've heard. Conductor and orchestra well deserved the standing ovation they received from the sold out house at its conclusion. Anyone who has an opportunity to hear this orchestra in performance should not hesitate to take it. They certainly give the audience its money's worth - Sunday's concert lasted a full two hours and forty minutes.
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