The Once and Future Beethoven at Davies

“Page de garde” (cover page) from the first edition of the score for Beethoven’s Opus 37 (third) piano concerto (provided by the International Music Score Library Project, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Yesterday afternoon pianist Yefim Bronfman returned to Davies Symphony Hall to serve as concerto soloist for the final San Francisco Symphony (SFS) program for the month of October. The conductor was SFS Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen; and the concerto was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 37 (third) in C minor. This was not my first encounter with Salonen conducting Beethoven. That took place in February of 2020, shortly after he had assumed Music Director Designate status; and he began his SFS program with the overture from Beethoven’s Opus 117 commemorative cantata King Stephen.

Nevertheless, yesterday afternoon was my first encounter with Salonen conducting a Beethoven piano concerto and my first opportunity to listen to his work with concerto soloist Bronfman. Beethoven himself was the soloist at this concerto’s first performance on April 5, 1803; but he had completed the composition in 1800. Beethoven also served as conductor, and the program included the first performance of his Opus 36 (second) symphony in D major. In terms of “biographical perspective,” Beethoven was first aware of the onset of deafness in 1802, reacting by sending a letter to his brothers now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament.

If that confrontation with deafness marked a dark time in Beethoven’s life, one would not know it from the Opus 37 concerto. The outer movements could not be more energetically optimistic, while there is a rhetoric of serenity behind the middle Largo movement. Bronfman thus captured the full spectrum of Beethoven’s dispositions in his solo work, and Salonen was keenly aware of every one of Bronfman’s rhetorical devices, making sure that the SFS musicians were there to meet him at every turn.

There is a tendency among those trying to simplify everything to dismiss Opus 37 as too “superficial” when cast in the shadow of the Opus 58 (fourth) concerto in G major. Such trivializations arise from looking through the telescope the wrong way. In both structure and rhetoric, Opus 37 was a “great leap forward” from the two earlier concertos, Opus 15 in C major and Opus 19 in B-flat major (numbering omitted to avoid the usual first-second confusion). Those concertos validate Beethoven’s imaginative command of eighteenth-century techniques; but Opus 37 sees him staking out new foundations that would guide him through his productivity during the early nineteenth century. Mind you, there are any number of pianists and conductors that cannot get beyond what they see as superficiality. Fortunately, Bronfman is not one of those pianists; and his chemistry in working with Salonen could not have done better justice to Beethoven’s achievements in composing Opus 37.

Following the concerto performance, Bronfman acknowledged audience appreciation with an encore. He selected the second of Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 27 nocturnes, this one in the key of D-flat major. His account could not have been more disciplined or more sensitive. For some of us, this made a welcome relief from the account of that nocturne given this past Wednesday night in Herbst Theatre!

Beethoven’s Opus 37 was complemented by the very first selection on the program, Anders Hillborg’s “Kongsgaard Variations.” The music was inspired by John Kongsgaard, co-founder of the Arietta winery in Napa Valley. The name of the winery was taken from the labeling of the second of the two movements in Beethoven’s Opus 111, his final piano sonata in the key of C minor. That movement is a highly inventive set of variations on a theme of uncanny (and deceptive) simplicity. Rather than reflecting on those variations, Hillborg composed his own perspective on Beethoven’s theme through a series of episodes that are almost too sophisticated to be called variations. The Beethoven theme only emerges toward the end of the composition in a context which may have also reflected on at least one of the “late period” string quartets.

“Kongsgaard Variations” was originally composed for string quartet in 2006. However, earlier this year Hillborg created a new version for full string ensemble. Today’s concert marked the first SFS performance of this version. Under Salonen’s baton one could appreciate Hillborg’s subtle technique through which the simplicity of Beethoven’s theme emerges from the thick complexity of the composer’s approach to writing for strings. This was music that demanded keenly attentive listening, but those taking the trouble to focus on all that was happening up on stage were definitely well rewarded.

This all-strings selection was followed by a composition by Richard Strauss for sixteen wind musicians. This was the second of two sonatinas composed for those resources. Strauss gave this particular sonatina the title “Fröhliche Werkstatt” (happy workshop). Unfortunately, this was one of those projects that looked better on paper than it sounded in performance. My personal conjecture is that Strauss did not have the ear for blending wind sonorities as skillfully as in his writing for strings. At the risk of rubbing readers the wrong way, I would like to suggest that, if Strauss really wanted to write for a wind ensemble, he would have done well to study how Gustav Holst worked with such resources. (In the early twentieth century, Strauss had been a key influence in Holst’s orchestral compositions.)

The Strauss sonatina was also receiving its first SFS performance. Salonen should be credited with his imaginative approach to complementing music for strings with music for winds. Sadly, however, in spite of his extensive experience as a composer, Strauss was clearly not in his comfort zone; and, even with Salonen’s attentive efforts as conductor, it was hard to get beyond the weaknesses of this sonatina.