Seong-Jin Cho, photo by Jag Gundu (edited for Blue Riband)
(program)
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra presented three works by Beethoven on Wednesday January 8, 2020 at Roy Thomson Hall.
Ludwig van Beethoven
- King Stephen Overture, Op. 117 (composed in 1811)
- Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 (composed 1805–1806)
- Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 (composed in 1811-1812)
‘Beethoven 7’ runs from January 8-11 at Roy Thomson Hall
In all the works of Beethoven, you will not find a single lie. / All important ideas must include mountains and blossoms and river. ““ Mary Oliver, Leaves and Blossoms Along The Way
Beethoven 250, the year-long global celebration of 250 years since the composer’s birthday—or, in actuality, since the day of his baptism as no decisive record of his date of birth exists—saw it’s de facto launch in Toronto this past Wednesday with an all-Beethoven program courtesy of the TSO. After 200 years of a composer who’s name is practically a sub-genre, itself an institution, it seems Beethoven has meant everything to almost everyone almost everywhere—what could be left to say or think or feel for him?
The trick to truly getting into Beethoven, beyond the cliche, is to put aside the hoopla and rediscover the passion, the humanity, the strangeness, the unceasing variety within his tireless pursuit of organic unity. Forget the myth. Listen to the music. You will find not “Beethoven,” but instead a collection of unforgettable individuals that steadily reveal new territories of sound and emotion. “” Jan Swafford, Language of the Spirit
And so in the three works presented by the TSO for a nearly packed house at Roy Thomson Hall, we hear and feel three Beethovens, one more distinct than the rest, but all three a testament to the timelessness and the inexhaustibility of his legendary catalog.
Sir Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony Orchesrta, photo by Jag Gundu (edited for Blue Riband)
The program began with the King Stephen Overture, a work commissioned by German playwright August Kotzebue—hearing it for the first I’m reminded of the introduction Nina Simone often gave as a prefix for her song ‘Mississippi Goddam’: This is a show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it, yet—catchy melodies are urged on by bustling activity that occasionally refrains for a memorable phrase from the small woodwind ensemble. The program for the first TSO performance of this Overture in 1974 refer to it as a ‘pot-boiler’, the kind of work that is moreso the result of efforts to remain gainfully employed than the quenching of a burning creative urge, the industrious Beethoven that would become the genre’s first independent artist. (And bit of TSO history: the conductor at that first performance was a young Andrew Davis, the TSO’s interim Artistic Director who once again took to the podium—now in his capacity as Sir Andrew Davis—some 46 years later to replicate this overture.)
We encounter yet another Beethoven in his Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major; much more studious in spirit than the author of the previous Overture, more private and introspective than the one that was still almost two decades away from Ode To Joy. To introduce the concerto, and provide some commentary on the program, Assistant Principal Violist Theresa Rudolf steps up to the microphone—during the shuffle of furniture to way for the resident Grand Piano—to deliver a short eloquently engaging spiel underscoring the personal significance of the Symphony No.7 to her as well as some useful information for those who didn’t bother with the program notes. These routine meet-the-members speeches are a great initiative that I applaud the TSO for undertaking, it simultaneously spotlights members of the orchestra and the musical journeys that brought them to Toronto, as well as hi-lights the features of the items on the program that might be very useful for first-timers and less-than-active listeners alike.
Beethoven distributes the score evenly between soloist and orchestra, at times giving a bit more to the latter. It begins with a curt proclamation by the soloist that inspires an extended passage by the orchestra. From thereon it’s as if the two components of the performance are speaking contrasting accents of the same language—a softer dialect on piano, and a decidedly more agitated counterpart among the orchestra’s various sects.
In this most lyrical, poetic, and fantastical of his concertos, Beethoven does not abandon Mozartian concerto form, but imbues it with a genuinely Romantic voice, reconceived in ways all the more expressive for their audacity. “” TSO Program note by Kevin Bazzana
Seong-Jin Cho, photo by Jag Gundu (edited for Blue Riband)
It’s remarkable how entirely distinct the sound of the piano is from the rest of the orchestra, there’s nothing comparable in the orchestra to the cold clean clank of the instrument, and this concerto makes the most of this difference throughout its three movements. The most pleasing subtleties of this contrast, however, would be lost without an adequately observant performance by the soloist—and here I have nothing but praise for Seong-Jin Cho, a Korean-born, internationally trained and Paris-based pianist. The basic scale for my experience of a pianist’s dramatic performance is placing it somewhere in-between too many gestures and too little (though there are exceptions like Lang Lang, who is in that respect off the charts). With Seong-Jin Cho’s performance of this concerto, it seems all of his gestures are in the music, you barely notice them. So well does his demeanour fit the role of soloist to the orchestra for this particular piece: primarily as a voice of calm, tranquilizing the ecstatic outbursts and rambling stretches of the orchestral part. By third movement the piano seems to have achieved its goal, the agitation subsides, the mood is lightened and what remains of the concerto are jovial and danceable passages, coming to the neat and satisfying cadential closure characteristic of the composer. After several endless rounds of applause, Seong-Jin Cho followed his act with a tender encore, the identity of which I’m unsure of (Schubert perhaps?).
Much of how we receive an orchestra’s performance is owed to the recording that introduced us to piece: Toscanini conducting the Symphony Orchestra of New York and Bernstein doing the same for the Weiner Philarmoniker, are the two recordings that have trained my ear as to the pace and points of emphasis that should attend to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major. There were definitely a couple places where it felt the orchestra fell just shy of the anticipated thrill of a particular crescendo, and likewise there were times the alacrity of their pace and unison of their sound was like that of a studio recording.
The Beethoven of the Symphony No. 7 is the popularly known Beethoven, of grand gestures and orchestral tuttis that feel like they’ll bring the house down. Much has been made of the composer’s late stage, the late quartets composed near to or perhaps on his death bed, the applause for the final movement of his Symphony No.9 that he was by then too deaf to appreciate. But the complications resulting from his health were already noticeable much earlier than those more famous instances. For this Symphony No. 7, there’s a telling anecdote by one of the members of violin section during a rehearsal, when the ailing composer failed to register one of the quieter moments of the Allegretto and proceeded to repeat the same passage from the podium. Reacting to the embarrassment in his own peculiar manner:
Beethoven, to signify this in his own way, had crept completely under the desk. Upon the now ensuing crescendo, he again made his appearance, raised himself continually more and more, and then sprang up high from the ground, when according to his calculation the moment for the forte should begin. As this did not take place, he looked around him affright, stared with astonishment at the orchestra that it should still be playing pianissimo, and only recovered himself when at length the long expected forte began, and was audible to himself.“” Louis Spohr, Louis Spohr’s Autobiography
Sir Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony Orchesrta, photo by Jag Gundu (edited for Blue Riband)
The Pastoral Symphony that precedes this symphony is my favourite of Beethoven’s, of any composer for that matter, and I hear in the first movement of No.7 some lingering remnants of the Pastoral (notably the theme played on flutes). But the comparison perhaps ends there as No.7 is altogether more Classical in structure and less Romantic in mood. Its fast movements progress via a stop-start locomotive, that showed off the precision and accordance of the TSO. The slow second movement is instead a sombre and delicate procession—a very expensive sleeping pill to be honest—it’s with the third movement that things get really interesting; for here we find Beethoven the clever melodist, author of irresistibly whistleable tunes to take with you for the ride home. This movement, Presto, too reminds me of the energy of that blooming theme of the first movement of the Pastoral. The essential structure of the movement is a back-and-forth between a scherzo and a trio (scherzo-trio-scherzo-trio-scherzo), with short spiralling phrases on woodwind interrupted by slower moving orchestral parts. The TSO drove the momentum of the final scherzo, without pause, into the fourth movement: a boisterous Allegro con brio that tumbles forward with a sprightly string section intermittently revved by timpani rolls before crashing—after an excess of repetition—to an abrupt finale.
The evening was altogether a great start to the year for the TSO and its interim Artistic Director, a display of their usual clockwork synchronicity despite the holiday break (during which some members kept busy musically—notably principal cellist Joseph Johnson’s nearly two-hour gig as host of the CBC’s This Is My Music). It was also an opportunity to briefly step away from the current of current events; I’ve found it difficult since the start of the year to do any writing without making reference to the list of badshit crazy currently gripping international headlines—the circumstances surrounding Flight 752’s fatal crash brings the whole mess to the realm of unspeakable wrecklessness. Sitting together with the multitude of other concert-goers on Wednesday brought me the realization that that was exactly what I needed for the sake of a brief reset. For all the reasons we come together in a concert hall, prime among them is the collective tuning that is part and parcel of the experience.