Biggest of the three B`s: a wild Beethoven concert

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Monday, July 28, 2008
SYMPHONY
Biggest of the three B’s: a wild Beethoven concert
R· E ·V· I · E ·W
by Zachary Lewis
Guest reviewer
All-Beethoven orchestral
concerts often can be formulaic experiences. Play a
favorite symphony or two,
throw in a concerto and a
star soloist and voila, the
audience goes home happy.
But the all-Beethoven
program presented by the
Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra Saturday night at
the Amphitheater was anything but routine. In fact,
for a concert devoted to
arguably the biggest of the
so-called three B’s, this one
was practically wild.
Not that the performances
were out of control. On the
contrary, the CSO, music director Stefan Sanderling, the
Finger Lakes Choral Festival and the many guest artists who joined them were,
for the most part, paragons
of musical virtue. It was a
good thing, too, as the concert was broadcast live on
public radio, spreading the
Chautauqua name across
the region through stations
in Buffalo and Pittsburgh.
No, what made Saturday’s
program special was the
repertoire, for there were no
war-horses in sight. Instead,
the CSO turned its attention
to four of the composer’s
showier but lesser-known
pieces. Thus, the concert
represented an occasion
for music-lovers, and especially those who nurture a
fondness for Beethoven, to
reconsider the author of the
“Ode to Joy” from several
fresh angles.
Beethoven’s First Symphony may not be unknown, but it is far from
universally beloved. No one
could rightly call it famous,
not in comparison to the
Third, Fifth, Seventh, and
Ninth Symphonies. Yet this
early work had the unusual
honor of being the standout
feature of Saturday’s concert, not only on the basis of
the electrifying delivery it
received from the CSO, but
also as the weightiest work
on the program.
Sanderling and crew truly
Photos by Caitlin M. Prarat
The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and the Finger Lakes Choral Festival receive a standing ovation at the end of Saturday night’s
performance, when they shared the stage in Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra in C minor, Opus 80.
The horn players contribute to the heroism in Beethoven’s music.
seemed to relish their brush
with this piece, often underappreciated for its Classicalperiod ties, bringing it to
life in a performance replete
with character and energy.
Articulation
throughout
their account was taut and
snappy, while players in the
string and woodwind sections provided a wealth of
sonic details to savor.
In the slow second movement, Sanderling guided the
ensemble in a delicate lilt
and maintained crystal-clear
Music Director Stefan Sanderling conducts Saturday night’s CSO
performance in the Amphitheater.
textures, even in relatively
dense counterpoint. This
elegant touch extended into
the brisk Menuetto, which
came off cleanly and with
fleet-footed grace. Only in
the work’s last few measures
did the orchestra indulge
in anything approaching
heaviness, hitting the final
notes like clean hammer-
strokes, thereby placing a
definitive seal on a definitive performance.
Beethoven’s Fantasy for
Piano, Chorus and Orchestra involved the largest
number of performers Saturday night, but it was not
the most substantial piece
on the program. With its
thin musical material and
grandiose forces, including
five vocal soloists, it’s a work
hard to take seriously, resembling a massive jam session
as much as the hefty opus its
title suggests. But what fun it
is, this 20-minute crescendo
from solo piano to choral and
orchestral effusion.
Guest pianist Sara Buechner kicked off the proceedings appropriately, punching
out the solo virtuoso displays at the beginning with
a noble, if somewhat heavyhanded, intensity that boded
of the bonanza to come. Soon
the orchestra jumped into
the game, and before long,
Sanderling was turning up
the heat, and soloists in the
woodwind and brass sections were exchanging solo
passages in the collegial spirit of chamber music.
Chorus and vocal soloists don’t get involved in this
piece until near the very end,
and their entry this time was
something to remember, a
glorious release of long pentup momentum. What’s more,
Sanderling was not about to
waste this considerable potential energy, choosing to
whip his expanded crowd of
performers into an exciting
but nearly chaotic frenzy.
With the orchestra and
chorus playing and singing
the score’s principal themes,
the material left for the vocal soloists is relatively scant.
Yet soprano Malinda Haslett,
mezzo-soprano Quinn Patrick, bass Derrick Smith and
tenors Jonathan Boyd and
Grady Bailey III did their best
with what they were given,
turning in performances that
were as refined and well-balanced as they were brief.
Both halves of the concert
opened with one of the four
overtures to the opera we
now know as “Fidelio.” Neither the third nor the fourth
draft the CSO selected qualifies as obscure, yet hearing
them both nearly back to
back in first-rate performances was a rare and illuminating chance to compare.
The third version, written
while Beethoven was still
calling the opera “Leonore,”
is the meatier and lengthier
of the two, a self-contained
miniature drama in which
musical ideas are both more
plentiful and more fully developed. The “Fidelio” overture, by contrast, is a model
of economy designed only
to whet the appetite for the
tale to come.
Sanderling gave neither
piece short shrift. To “Fidelio,” he applied effective
dramatic shading, while
in “Leonore,” he crafted a
broad and compelling narrative arch that held one’s
attention throughout.
Both works, too, received
lively, galvanized treatment
from the CSO, the kind of
performance that seems to be
emerging as a pattern with
Sanderling here at Chautauqua. Indeed, in this respect,
the concert revealed almost
as much about the Institution’s new music director as
it did Beethoven.
Zachary Lewis is a freelance
arts journalist in Cleveland.