In continuing our discussion of this under-discussed work, I asked Leonard Slatkin to explain it from the conductor’s viewpoint. Leonard is former music director in St Louis, London, Washington DC, Lyon and Detroit.
What the Seventh Tells Us
By Leonard Slatkin
Ask any conductor what the first Beethoven Symphony they ever led was, and the response is more than likely to be the Seventh. Why is that?
In many ways, this is the least difficult technically to direct. Other than the transition into the Allegro of the first movement and figuring out what to do about the tempo of the trio, the physical act of conducting is not nearly as complicated as in the other works. Even many of the decisions regarding phrasing are fairly straightforward.
What makes a good performance of this work has to do with how the myriad details are presented. Even more important, as with virtually all symphonies, is the ability for the conductor to give each movement a well thought out sense of the architecture. Has the journey felt complete?
The choices about length of notes, articulation and balance are critical to make a really outstanding performance. Even the first chord is up for grabs. Is it short and aggressive or longer and noble? In the introduction, can we always sustain the main tune with all those semi-quavers going on at the same time? Is the upbeat to the Allegro in the tempo of the introduction or the same as what occurs next?
The main body of the movement has one of Beethoven’s trickiest rhythms to bring off successfully. It is usually notated as a quaver, followed by a semi-quaver rest and then another quaver in the 6/8 meter. This is same rhythm that the timpani plays in the Scherzo of the Ninth. In fact, I always tell the orchestra to think of that instrument in order to play it correctly. Just think tim-pani, tim-pani and you will get the idea.
There is always controversy about the tempo of the 2nd movement. Notice that I did not call it the slow movement. After all, it is marked Allegretto. Every conductor I know has struggled with this and changed their minds over and over. George Szell called this, along with the 2nd movement of the Schubert Ninth, the two most difficult pieces to start conducting. There was a time when it was performed regularly as a funereal work, even today sometimes played as a memorial. Current thinking has moved most interpreters to a more forward moving tempo, but there still needs to be dignity.
What to do about those repeats in the Scherzo? Again, each of us changes our mind as we want to be faithful to what Beethoven wrote. but it can sometimes be a bit boring to perform the same music three times. And the equivalent problem pops up again in the Finale. The metronome marking is on the fast side and once in a while we are confronted with the possible lack of technical finesse to make it work with some orchestras. Plus, the acoustics of the environment can also force us into a compromise as regards the speed.
I will not get into matters of adjusting for balances, where the winds and strings need to take breaths, or how loud the triple fortes really should be. This is the first time the composer utilized that dynamic. Therefore, should all the double fortes that precede it be of lesser volume? Choices, choices, choices.
My selections for “best” recordings are incomplete by necessity. I have not heard every performance so more than likely left many behind. But the ones that I chose are those that caught my attention and made me want to hear them again. If you want to know my own personal taste in this masterpiece, you would have to obtain the recording I made with the Detroit Symphony (not on Idagio or Youtube). Does it match up to the ones I selected. No. But it is not bad.
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Thanks for that, Leonard. Before we move into a consideration tomorrow of the outstanding records of all time, here are a couple of nuggest from the Idagio archives.
Richard Strauss conducting the finale in Berlin, 1922, with astonishing poise and momentum.
Willem Mengelberg in Amsterdam, 1940, immeasurably individualist, uncontainably awkward.
George Szell‘s earlier recording, in 1943, with a New York Philharmonic trained to within an inch of their lives. Quite horrible at times.
And this absolute rarity: Herbert von Karajan conducting the opera orchestra in Berlin in 1941, a time that Wilhelm Furtwängler was using all his influence with the Nazis to get the young contender on a train out of town, preferably to somewhere near a war front. Karajan directs this symphony with panache bordering on insouciance, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The performance exists almost out of time. Where, with Furtwängler, you cannot fail to be aware there’s a war going on, with Karajan this could be a stroll with a girlfriend in the park. The second movement is romantic, never ominous, and the finale is magnificence itself. You wll come away from this thinking better of Karajan. Myself, I’d recommend this as his most personal, most polished, Beethoven recording.
More tomorrow.
Believe it.
This is the Rotterdam Philharmonic, who have led from the front by way of ingenuity right though this horrible time in human history.
…. a timely tribute to a composer who found his voice in fits and starts. It has at once the dignity of a devotional work and the drama of the greatest story ever told. We will not hear its like again in the next few years, for reasons no one had foreseen. Keep it on your shelves as a reminder of how the world sounded before it was shrunk by COVID-19.
After all players were tested negative in a COVID-Test prior to the rehearsal, we are able to play again! Here are some impressions of our rehearsal for the upcoming concerts with Maestro Daniel Barenboim this weekend. The program features Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Mozart’s piano concerto No. 27.
Leigh Mesh, associate principal bass at the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, is married to associate concertmaster Nancy Wu. They have seen see Peter Gelb announcing their future in a newspaper before he tells the musicians. Not happy about it.
I’m talking personally, but I’m irked at finding out what happens in my workplace in the media. I’m particularly irked at the particulars of what our online gala brought in. [The Met has raised $60 million in the past two months, including through the gala. The orchestra musicians and singers who participated were not paid. —Ed.] Peter Gelb was asked repeatedly about that information, and he refused to tell us. We learned about it in the Times.
I really wish communication with the company would be much different than it is. I don’t know that would have really changed anything. Certainly what the gala earned is a drop in the bucket. But just in this time, it doesn’t feel good. Morale is pretty low.
Your wife Nancy Wu is associate Concertmaster. That means you’re losing two incomes… Yes, true. But we’re also in a good position because we’ve had two incomes. We have savings, and we’re also receiving two unemployment checks. It puts us in a better position. But losing the extra benefit now will really cut our earnings, and I imagine lots of people are going to be in trouble.
The conductor took a train this week from Berlin to Munich for his first meeting with an orchestra since lockdown. The date was fixed in a matter of days – rather than the years it normally takes to set up a concert.
Among other things he says:
I think a lot will change. I assume that intensive tours around the world will no longer be possible in the next five years. The London Symphony Orchestra should be on an incredible 99 days on tour next year. And I haven’t counted the national guest concerts yet. This is by no means sustainable, even if the orchestra can only survive in this way. In the long run, I don’t expect orchestras to continue flying around the world.
The gifted Rosemarie Wright has died at 88.
She made an explosive debut, stepping in for Martha Argerich at the larger hall of Vienna’s Musikverein in 1960, and was much in demand across Europe. At home, she specialised in the works of British composers Edmund Rubbra and Arnold Cooke.
She was professor of piano at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, and the Royal Academy of Music, London.
The younger brother of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a Catholic priest, theologian and music scholar, has departed this life.
The Harnoncourt brothers were close and Nikolaus talked to me once of Philipp with undisguised admiration.
Philipp (r. in the picture) founded a university department of church music at Graz and was active at the Vatican to improve relations with Greek Orthodoxy.
He was also involved in the publication of the first common hymn book for German-speaking Roman Catholic dioceses.
May he rest in peace.
Helga Rabl-Stadler, 72, has just been asked to stay on for another year, to the end of August 2021.
This is partly a reward for her successful political campaign to save part of this year’s festival, and partly a need for continuity after what will undoubtedly be a traumatic centennial summer.
Helga stays on to fight another day.
Eight members of the orchestras have been studying Toshio Hosokawas Texture at home. They will perform it tomorrow on the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall.
The Berlin Phil Series will have its first premiere on 6 June: The Philharmonic Octet presents Toshio
Hosokawa’s Texture, a work commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation and the Japan
Arts Cooperation. The Philharmonic Octet and the composer have rehearsed the piece together online.
The world premiere, which was scheduled to take place on 18 May as part of the Philharmoniker’s
chamber music series, will now be broadcast exclusively in the Digital Concert Hall on 6 June. The
programme also includes the Octet in F op. 34 by Hugo Kaun and the Octet in F major D 803 by Franz
Schubert.
After the concert on Saturday, a Live Lounge with musicians of the octet will take place on Facebook:
facebook.com/BerlinPhil
… One last thing. While a huge percentage of working people have suffered over these past three months, there are also many (whisper it) whom Covid-19 has made rich. It would be deeply ironic if the streaming services — Netflix, Amazon Prime et al — should be making lockdown millions from our finest acting, producing, writing and directing talent, while the very arts culture that nurtured that talent pool is allowed to die. Is there anyone among those people willing to use a fraction of their Covid-19 windfall to help those who have been mortally wounded? If so, I hope you’re reading this, and that you are able to think of the arts landscape as more than just a “content provider”, but instead as an ecosystem that supports us all.
Will they ever? Don’t hold your breath.
Mary Christie, who made generations of singers feel at ease in the family’s countryhouse opera festival, has died of cancer, aged 83.
Mary married George Christie, the founder’s son, when she was just 24 and devoted much of the rest of her life to the opera.
Gus Christie, Executive Chairman, said: ‘My dear mother passed away peacefully at home in the early hours of yesterday morning after a long and courageous battle. She will be remembered, in the words of my late father, as ‘the heartbeat which is at the core of Glyndebourne’s existence’. Her devotion to Glyndebourne, and in particular her love of the gardens, has enriched the lives of so many of us.’
Dame Sarah Connolly writes: ‘Desperately sad news about Lady Mary Christie who died today. I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently and didn’t know she’d been really poorly and not spoken for a while. She has been a source of fun, joy and elegance for all of us at Glyndebourne but more than that she was dearly loved. Thinking of the Christie family.
