Beethoven250 Off to a Delightful Start with Ax

This week’s SFS soloist, pianist Emanuel Ax (from the event page for this week’s SFS concert)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) “officially launched” its Beethoven250 series of concerts celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven this coming December. The program marked the occasion with a performance of Beethoven’s Opus 19 (second) piano concerto in B-flat major. SFS was conducted by Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT); and the soloist was Emanuel Ax, a familiar face in Davies and known for his Beethoven interpretations.

In spite of the numbering, Opus 19 is probably Beethoven’s earliest published composition for piano and orchestra. Its first sketches date from 1788, when Beethoven was still a teenager; and the premiere performance took place on March 29, 1795. Due to subsequent revisions, the score was not published until 1801.

The music abounds with wit. As I have suggested in the past, Beethoven’s sense of humor may have been motivated by a determination to outdo the prodigious capacity of Joseph Haydn’s sense of humor. Nevertheless, the prevailing rhetoric of Opus 19 has more to do with personal high spirits than any sense of one-upmanship. Beethoven clearly reveled in all of the witty turns at the keyboard that he played during the premiere, but there is also that same sense of joyous interplay between soloist and ensemble that is frequently found in the piano concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

There was no mistaking those spirits in last night’s performance. Ax was visibly delighted by every clever turn that Beethoven took, determined to make sure that the entire audience became acquainted with each one of them. His long-time chemistry with MTT simply raised the ante on how much those of us on audience side could revel in every measure of the score. This was very much a contemporary perspective of Beethoven, but it was one that was as true to the composer’s spirit as it was to the marks on the score pages.

Ax’ sense of humor extended to his encore selection. He played Beethoven’s WoO 59 bagatelle in A minor, best known under the title “Für Elise.” This has become a notorious example of music played by too many amateurs almost always too poorly. Ax gave the score an engagingly disarming account, reminding listeners that there is a true rhetorical gem to be found within all the dirt of hackneyed performances. Taken as a whole, last night was definitely a good one for Beethoven.

MTT made some fascinating decisions when it came to the context in which that Beethoven selection was presented. The other major work on the program was the 1929 revision of the three pieces for orchestra that Alban Berg published as his Opus 6. The initial version was composed between the summer of 1913 and the fall of 1915. Those dates are significant, because Berg’s work on his Wozzeck opera began in 1914; and, in many respects, Opus 6 serves as a “laboratory notebook” for the creation of Wozzeck.

This is probably most evident in the second piece “Reigen” (round dance), which anticipated the scene in the tavern that takes place after Wozzeck has murdered Marie. However, the opening “Preludium” provides early suggestions of the many nocturnal scenes in the opera, all of which are haunted in one way or another, including the one in which Wozzeck drowns in the pond in which he had deposited Marie’s body. The final piece is a mercilessly brutal march, anticipating the music for the Drum Major in the opera, climaxing in the beating his gives Wozzeck at the end of the opera’s second act.

MTT’s account of Opus 6 could not have been better. He seemed to have found the dark side of every motivic gesture in Berg’s score. The result was a dark account of one of Berg’s earliest exercises in cultivating sinister rhetoric. This may not have given the entire program a cheerful ending, but the conclusion was definitely a memorable one.

Appropriately enough, Richard Wagner was given the space between Beethoven and Berg with a performance of “Siegfried Idyll.” Wagner composed this piece as a birthday present for his second wife Cosima. However, the music honors not only Cosima’s birth but also that of her son, whom they named Siegfried. The piece was first performed on December 25, 1870 in the Swiss villa where they were living at the time. Wagner’s Siegfried opera would receive its premiere in 1876, and many will recognize motifs from “Siegfried Idyll” that worked their way into the opera’s score.

Given the domestic setting of its first performance, the score was written for a chamber orchestra of thirteen players: flute, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, two violins, viola, cello and bass. For marketing reasons Wagner subsequently allowed for an expanded string section, suggesting 35 as a suitable number of players. I was fortunate enough to experience the original version performed by members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. That experience took place over 30 years ago, and its is still memorable. The downside, however, is that listening to an expanded ensemble still makes me cringe. Given Wagner’s predilection for massive resources, the intimacy of the chamber version is that refreshing spring encountered in the middle of an expansive desert. Last night’s performance may have satisfied the more conventional spirit of Wagner, but the lack of the intimacy of “Siegfried Idyll” as it was originally composed was too disappointing for words.

More disappointing, however, was the opening selection, the West Coast premiere of Julia Wolfe’s “Fountain of Youth.” This was written under extensive commissioning resources, including a consortium of symphony orchestras that included SFS. However, it was written for MTT’s New World Symphony, which gave the premiere performance this past April.

About twelve minutes in duration, the pieces is a wild romp through the expansive resources of the sonorities of a large orchestral ensemble (complete with an enthusiastic percussion section). Given that the composer was over 60 when she created this piece, one might take it as a personal reflection of earlier days when she was more energetic. There was also a clear sense of wild abandon in her approach to instrumentation, beginning with some raucous extended techniques required of the entire string section. Nevertheless, the entire experience felt a bit like the personal meditation of an individual most of us on audience side did not know very well, sort of like an in-joke that we were not expected to get. Still, the music got the program off to a rousing start; and, in the context of all the other selections, that was definitely an appropriate way to begin.