Brüggen, Bezuidenhout, and the Orchestra of the 18th Century at Tanglewood
with a digression on Beethoven's 9th Symphony with Fr�hbeck de Burgos and the TMC Orchestra
By: Michael Miller - Aug 29, 2007
Tanglewood Festival
Seiji Ozawa Hall
Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century
Frans Brüggen, conductor
Tuesday, August 21, 8:30 p.m., Ozawa Hall
All-Schubert Program
Symphony in B minor, D.759, "Unfinished"
Symphony in C, D. 944, "The Great"
Wednesday, August 22, 8:30 p.m., Ozawa Hall
All-Beethoven Program
Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
Piano Concerto no. 4 in G, Op. 58
Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano
Symphony No. 5, in C minor, Op. 67
Sunday, August 19, 2.30 p.m.
Koussevitzky Music Shed
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver, conductor
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, conductor
Melanie Diener, soprano
Mary Phillips, mezzo-soprano
Marcus Haddock, tenor
Raymond Aceto, bass
Beethoven, Symphony no. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
Thanks largely to NL, a wide-ranging celebration of Dutch culture in the Berkshires, Tanglewood has done ample justice this summer to the world of period instruments and "early music." This is a welcome and appropriate extension of Tanglewood's traditional mission, and I hope it becomes an ongoing part of every summer program from now on. Hesperion XXI, the Netherlands Bach Society, and now The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century all came close to filling Seiji Ozawa Hall to capacity with enthusiastic audiences. Every concert ended with a standing ovation from the audience, in which I recognized a few familiar faces from the early music world, but which otherwise seemed like the usual week-night audience. And it's not such a bad thing to attract early music enthusiasts to Tanglewood either. The BSO administration cannot fail to recognize that they have a ready and enthusiastic audience early music and classical repertoire played on period instruments.
Founded in 1981 with some fifty members by Frans Brüggen, who was already famous as a recorder virtuoso, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century has played a major role in building that audience. They offered robust, musically satisfying performances, free from dicey intonation and academic whigmaleeries, and extended their repertoire into the nineteenth century. Now 77, Dr. Brüggen pursues an active schedule of conducting engagements which include not only another prominent period-instrument group, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, but also mainstream orchestras like the Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw, as well as opera in Zurich and Lyon. His many recordings for Philips with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century extended their outreach even further. In 1997 they established their own label, Grand Tour/Glossa, pioneering a healthy recent trend in classical recording.
The orchestra's two programs, one devoted to Schubert's late symphonies and the other to middle-period Beethoven, were scheduled as a sort of coda to Tanglewood's classical season, which closed officially the previous Sunday with Beethoven's Ninth under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. Hence this commendable effort by the enthusiastic TMC Orchestra under a conductor I especially admire for his virile, straightforward musicianship was still fresh in my ears. The TMC Orchestra's sound, leaner than the BSO, was an asset in clarifying Beethoven's complex textures, and Frühbeck de Burgos coaxed them through an expressive and nuanced slow movement. A problem in the difficult horn arpeggio brought back memories of shortcomings in the playing of the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic not so long ago. The chorus sang impressively as always. The only things to dislike about this performance was a fairly ordinary solo quartet (a little better than ordinary in the case of soprano Melanie Diener and Raymond Aceto and a little less than ordinary in tenor Marcus Haddock) and Frühbeck de Burgos's insistence on seating first and second violins together at the left. This undermines Beethoven's antiphonal passages for the two groups and muddies orchestral textures overall, especially in the Music Shed. I went to Mr. Brüggen and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century with the memory of this excellent, but fairly typical late-twentieth century performance of Beethoven's Ninth still fresh in my ears.
The first concert began with Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony, which is perhaps not so much overplayed today as it once was. We immediately began to hear the advantage of period instruments in the brooding opening theme. As it unfolded at a very broad tempo, the tone was dark and severe, the intonation perfect, and the phrasing taut and expressive, bringing us deep into the unique mood of Schubert's strange composition. The flowing string accompaniment to the melancholy woodwind theme had a bite we don't usually hear with metal-stringed instruments, as well as many transitory effects of color and texture. This effortless clarity of inner voices, characteristic of well-played period strings, was a welcome feature of all the performances, as was the overall balance, especially impressive in the monumental chords in the development section. The deliberate, exploratory pace of the first movement laid the foundations for a flowing lyrical second movement, which was no less involving, marked by Mr. Brüggen's sensitivity to Schubert's miraculous modulations and shifting moods as it proceeded to its pensive conclusion. Like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Schubert's "Unfinished" seems actually truncated without repeats, and fortunately Mr. Brüggen observed most if not all in every work.
Schubert's late C major symphony, an extroverted work quite different in style, benefitted from all the same qualities as the "Unfinished." With its energetic forward propulsion and massive tutti, the revelation of its inner voices through the spare but colorful sound of the orchestra's strings seemed entirely natural in a way not often heard with orchestras playing modern instruments. In Schubert's succession of massive repeated chords their attack had both bite and weight, although they were not compulsively clean, in the manner of American orchestras, but, in the style of the great European orchestras, present in musical meaning. This expansive work notoriously presents special problems for orchestras, particularly in the trombones which enrich the brass section—often to the detriment of the orchestral texture overall. Sir Adrian Boult, who made a speciality of the "Great," solved this problem by seating the trombones with their bells to the left, rather than facing the audience. With historical instruments this is no longer necessary. The lighter-sounding period trombones blended more easily. I thought of Sir Adrian once again in the climax of the slow movement, when, after loud outbursts of brass and the entire orchestra, a long rest is followed by delicate pizzicato chords. At this point it is all too easy for the conductor to lapse into manipulations of tempo, which distort the already interrupted pulse of the music. Boult, always circumspect in rubato, achieved a touching moment here entirely with color and texture, following the example of his hero, Artur Nikisch. Brüggen followed a similar approach here, and the orchestra was able to provide the subtlest nuances of color. In the opening of the scherzo similar nuances are revealed in the figures accompanying the main theme. These are background details, of course, but they add to the splendor of the overall texture, and relieve any trace of monotony in its energetic bouncing rhythms. The audience received the triumphant conclusion of this grand work was received with a lengthy standing ovation, which the musicians graciously acknowledged with an encore, the familiar Entr'acte from Rosamunde, tenderly played, and benefitting greatly from the transparent textures of period instruments.
The second program opened with a lean, dark reading of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, the grand tragic chordal gestures full of bite and weight, and the nervous, racing figures expressive and light. The Fourth Piano Concerto followed, with the brilliant South African keyboard player, Kristian Bezuidenhout, playing the solo on a Regier copy of an 1830 Graf (the same played in Ozawa Hall last year by Emanuel Ax?). This revelatory performance was the result of a stimulating encounter of two generations of the early music movement. Most of the musicians in the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century have been working for many years with period instruments and in the orchestra—and in other groups as well: some appeared earlier in the summer as members of the Netherlands Bach Society Orchestra. As I said above, their achievement has been to create period ensembles that can stand beside the great city orchestras on an equal footing in technical quality and musicianship, and in bringing historically informed music-making to life for a broad public. Mr. Bezuidenhout's generation has been educated and supported by their work and is in the position of carrying the art a step further. He can allow his imagination free rein in expanding the sonic and expressive vocabulary of his playing and in exploring the works themselves. This performance was both a discovery and a delight, thanks to Mr. Bezuidenhout's keen intellect, playful imagination, and magisterial virtuosity, not to mention his natural musicality. Some may have found his performance almost mannered, but his fine taste, I thought, kept him safe from this kind of excess. He produced an astonishing range of colors and textures, often making imaginative use of the pedals to exploit the natural resonance of the instrument—sounds probably not imagined by fortepianists in the early eighties—an indication that he has spent many hours experimenting with instruments. He began the work arpeggiating the first chord, following it with an exquisitely nuanced rendition of Beethoven's noble opening bars. When the orchestra intervened, its balance and its revelation of inner voices seemed exactly right. In order to support the rather delicate instrument, the musicians had to reduce their sound considerably, but Brüggen fit this into an entirely natural-sounding range of dynamics. Through the first movement, Bezuidenhout was alternately playful, songful and grand, introducing discreet, brief ornaments which never interrupted the flow of the music. He chose to play Beethoven's own extended cadenza, finding a vast expressive range in this complex fantasia. At the beginning of the second movement the sombre dotted passage of lower strings was marvelously black, and Bezuidenhout's lyrical interchange deeply reflective. The vigorous finale was similarly full of nuance, color, and expression. Brass and kettledrums, which make their first appearance in this movement, were prominent and perfectly balanced. The wonderful second subject, with its free floating solo passage above a tonic pedal point in the cellos alone and its contrapuntal elaboration, were truly amazing in phrasing and sonority.
The evening, and the Orchestra's visit came to an end with a taut account of the Fifth Symphony, remarkable for all the qualities I've praised above. It was an energetic, powerful reading, in no way less stirring than the best performances on modern instruments. Although Mr. Brüggen observed all repeats, his Fifth had the same telegraphic urgency of Tosacanini or Szell, who omitted them. Again there was a long ovation, but no encore. The concert was a great success, like all the historical instrument and early music performances hosted by Tanglewood this summer—an obvious sign that they are firmly entrenched in the mainstream and that there is a most welcome place for them at the pre-eminent mainstream music festival in North America. Perhaps, like some of their European colleagues, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony may even give gut strings and a lower tuning a try some day.
Web: http://michaelmiller.goodletters.net
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