CONCERT REVIEW: Beethoven Strikes Back for Classics
By Anne Midgette
New York Times, August 6, 2005
The future of classical music is a hot topic these days. Plenty of us hold forth about the need for more new works, more variety, a more contemporary flavor. But the Mostly Mozart festival on Thursday night was an all-Beethoven concert with some of the most traditional, oft-played repertory in the book: the violin concerto and the third symphony. And what do you know? The crowds reached from Alice Tully Hall to the corner, and many were turned away disappointed. It looked like the event of the summer. Which should remind some of us that one thing the classical music audience does want is classical music.
And in this case the audience was completely right. The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, conducted by Paavo Järvi, gave one hot performance.
Part of the reason it was so good was that it was young, energetic and contemporary, tradition notwithstanding. This orchestra grew out of a youth orchestra whose members wanted to find a way to keep playing together; it's organized democratically, and the players' autonomy is audible in the crispness and vitality of the playing. The winds are a full warm cohesive presence, balancing the taut strings. The players listen keenly to one another. Mr. Järvi, their artistic director, conducted with electricity, and the players followed him so closely that even the silences bristled.
There were moments when the act of interpretation was too deliberate. A surprisingly restrained passage at the opening of the violin concerto was followed by an exaggerated forte that didn't quite convince. And in the first movement of the symphony, at the moment when the recapitulation carries the end of the first theme into an upward curve like a burst of light, the conductor turned and gave a kind of wry smile over his shoulder to the audience. It was hard to tell if he was underlining the moment's beauty or slightly mocking its sweetness, but it was certainly a reminder that this was his distinctive reading of it.
But his readings did allow each piece its own character. The Coriolanus Overture was startling and vivid. The violin concerto showed Beethoven at his most classical; the orchestra took its tone from the soloist, Viktoria Mullova, whose sound was light and dry, athletic but occasionally ungainly. (To her credit, she used new cadenzas by Ottavio Dantone; they tended to stutter and trip themselves up, but it was nice to hear a soloist put her own new stamp on the piece.) Mr. Järvi stripped the second movement of pathos and instead effectively used dynamic extremes, scaling down to a pianissimo so quiet as to verge on the border of the imaginable. But there was both warmth and pathos in the funeral march of the graceful Eroica.
Clear and compelling throughout, the performance was a reminder that new doesn't have to mean contemporary. For anyone wanting to get into classical music, this would have been a good first concert.
New York Times, August 6, 2005
The future of classical music is a hot topic these days. Plenty of us hold forth about the need for more new works, more variety, a more contemporary flavor. But the Mostly Mozart festival on Thursday night was an all-Beethoven concert with some of the most traditional, oft-played repertory in the book: the violin concerto and the third symphony. And what do you know? The crowds reached from Alice Tully Hall to the corner, and many were turned away disappointed. It looked like the event of the summer. Which should remind some of us that one thing the classical music audience does want is classical music.
And in this case the audience was completely right. The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, conducted by Paavo Järvi, gave one hot performance.
Part of the reason it was so good was that it was young, energetic and contemporary, tradition notwithstanding. This orchestra grew out of a youth orchestra whose members wanted to find a way to keep playing together; it's organized democratically, and the players' autonomy is audible in the crispness and vitality of the playing. The winds are a full warm cohesive presence, balancing the taut strings. The players listen keenly to one another. Mr. Järvi, their artistic director, conducted with electricity, and the players followed him so closely that even the silences bristled.
There were moments when the act of interpretation was too deliberate. A surprisingly restrained passage at the opening of the violin concerto was followed by an exaggerated forte that didn't quite convince. And in the first movement of the symphony, at the moment when the recapitulation carries the end of the first theme into an upward curve like a burst of light, the conductor turned and gave a kind of wry smile over his shoulder to the audience. It was hard to tell if he was underlining the moment's beauty or slightly mocking its sweetness, but it was certainly a reminder that this was his distinctive reading of it.
But his readings did allow each piece its own character. The Coriolanus Overture was startling and vivid. The violin concerto showed Beethoven at his most classical; the orchestra took its tone from the soloist, Viktoria Mullova, whose sound was light and dry, athletic but occasionally ungainly. (To her credit, she used new cadenzas by Ottavio Dantone; they tended to stutter and trip themselves up, but it was nice to hear a soloist put her own new stamp on the piece.) Mr. Järvi stripped the second movement of pathos and instead effectively used dynamic extremes, scaling down to a pianissimo so quiet as to verge on the border of the imaginable. But there was both warmth and pathos in the funeral march of the graceful Eroica.
Clear and compelling throughout, the performance was a reminder that new doesn't have to mean contemporary. For anyone wanting to get into classical music, this would have been a good first concert.
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