Salonen & Beethoven: Symphony & Concerto

Yesterday afternoon in Davies Symphony Hall, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen led the San Francisco Symphony in a program of two works composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in the same year (1806) with consecutive opus numbers. The first half of the program was devoted entirely to Opus 60, the fourth symphony in B-flat major. This was followed in the second half by Opus 61, the violin concerto in D major with Hilary Hahn as soloist. (This was also the year of Opus 59, the three “Razumovsky” string quartets.)

Where the canon of the nine symphonies is concerned, Opus 60 finds itself flanked by Beethoven exercising his dramatic chops. The third symphony is Opus 55, the “Eroica” in E-flat major, the first of the Beethoven symphonies to explore the intense dispositions that were just beginning to emerge in what is now called the Romantic era. On the “other side,” so to speak, Opus 60 is followed by Opus 67 in C minor, recognized for its rhetorical intensity so readily that most simply refer to it as “the fifth.”

While the rhetoric of Opus 60 is far from modest, one also gets the sense that Beethoven opted for a more traditional underlying structure. Indeed, I have always been amused by the fact that the trio in the third movement could be used to scan a quatrain that had previously been set to music by Henry Purcell:

Tis women makes us love
Tis Love that makes us sad,
Tis sadness makes us drink,
And drinking makes us mad.

Beethoven seems to have had a fair amount of interest in English songs, so it should not surprise anyone for his seizing upon one to add a little zest to the Scherzo movement. That zest does much to “lighten up” Opus 60’s discourse without letting it be overshadowed by Opus 55 and Opus 67. In yesterday afternoon’s performance, Salonen clearly knew how to capture this lighter side of Beethoven’s rhetoric.

The soloist for Opus 61 was Hilary Hahn, and her account of the violin concerto could not have been more satisfying. Her interplay with the ensemble, as led by Salonen, was consistently engaging; and her command of the virtuoso passages was just as consistently solid. For the cadenza in the first movement, she settled on Fritz Kreisler’s version (which is, by far, the most popular option). Kreisler was of course, the ultimate show-off when it came to technical challenges; and Hahn’s account of the many polyphonic passages he wove into the cadenza was as rock-solid as it was lovingly delivered. This may have been as “traditional” an approach to Opus 61 as one could expect, but there was consistently an engaging freshness in Hahn’s delivery of one of the most familiar war horses in the repertoire.

Hilary Hahn Playing “Through my Mother’s Eyes” as an encore for her performance with the National Youth Orchestra at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas (screenshot from the YouTube video of her performance)

The encore solo selection was “Through my Mother’s Eyes” composed by Steven Banks for Hahn on a commission by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which had a calming effect after the intensity of Beethoven but did little to raise very much attention.