Beethoven Today.
Richard Wigmore speaks to some of the world’s leading Beethoven conductors to understand why his music is as relevant and important today as it was 200 years ago.
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/beethoven-today
An interesting article. This in particular:
Richard Wigmore speaks to some of the world’s leading Beethoven conductors to understand why his music is as relevant and important today as it was 200 years ago.
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/beethoven-today
An interesting article. This in particular:
A crucial challenge for any interpreter in the 21st century, whatever the instruments used, is to balance loftiness of vision and the sonic power for which Beethoven was notorious in his lifetime with a mobility, lucidity and, where apt, a dancing lightness that evokes 1805 rather than 1875. Haitink is one of several conductors of an older generation – Claudio Abbado, in his DG Berlin cycle, is another – who has radically rethought his approach to Beethoven in recent years, not least in a wonderfully limber, joyous Pastoral Symphony. His LSO Live series is as successful as any at reconciling aspects of the Romantic tradition (including a certain flexibility of tempo and warm, singing lines) with the fierier, harder-edged style cultivated (with a nod to Toscanini and Reiner) by the authenticists.
‘In my younger days I was an admirer of the post-Wagnerian tradition as exemplified by Furtwängler,’ says Haitink. ‘But now I find Furtwängler very difficult to understand. When I hear his recordings of the slow movement of the Ninth, taking about 20 minutes to my 14, a part of me feels a bit guilty! But life is changing – and these days I simply can’t conduct the movement any slower. On the other hand, though I find Toscanini’s recordings interesting, he’s often too relentless for my taste; and I’m not a great fan of period instruments – I love the "modern" symphony orchestra as it is now, and the routine use of non-vibrato can become as boring as an automatic pilot vibrato. I have found some period recordings of Beethoven symphonies interesting, though one conductor, who shall remain nameless, should be in prison for his treatment of the Fifth!
‘It is true, though, that period performances have made us more aware of the revolutionary aspects of Beethoven, which I have tried to bring out in my performances with the LSO – more than in my earlier recordings with the LPO and the Concertgebouw. The Presto coda of the Eroica, for instance, works at a dangerously fast tempo – the LSO players said it felt like they were storming the barricades. The finale of No 7 is faster, too, almost up to Beethoven’s metronome mark, which used to be thought impossible. It’s the same with the finale of Symphony No 8. This has to go at a breakneck speed, as Beethoven prescribed, otherwise it gets pedestrian. Now I respond more, I think, to this symphony’s wit and humour, which can be quite sardonic and cynical, like the late String Quartet Op 135 in the same key, F major.’
The metronome question remains a notoriously ticklish one. With a few notable exceptions, conductors before the so-called ‘authentic’ revolution seldom took seriously the often provocatively fast markings the composer added to the first eight symphonies in 1817. A famous case in point is the Trio in No 7’s Scherzo, traditionally interpreted (by Furtwängler, Klemperer, Mengelberg et al) at a dirge-like tempo, as if to endorse the attractive but unauthenticated story that Beethoven based the music on an old pilgrims’ hymn. Toscanini and Reiner were the first on record to show that the music could work marvellously well at Beethoven’s given metronome marking of dotted minim=84, a swift speed, over half as fast again as the traditional tempo. At the faster speed the music dances as well as sings and, crucially, unfolds in vaulting eight-bar phrases rather than ponderous two-bar units.
In our authenticity-conscious age it is rare for a conductor to disregard the metronome markings out of hand (though, surprisingly, the newest maestro on the block, Dudamel, reverts to the old, slow tradition in the Trio of No 7). Yet for Jonathan Del Mar, whose Bärenreiter Urtext editions of the Beethoven symphonies have been used (albeit often selectively) in most recent recorded cycles, the metronome can be a bugbear. ‘If you ask me in the quiet atmosphere of my kitchen how fast the first movement of the Eroica goes, I would say about dotted minim=60 – which funnily enough is exactly what Beethoven gave it when he sang it in his kitchen in 1817, 14 years after he composed the symphony. The problem is that this fast tempo takes no account of what the violas are doing, or of the galloping rhythm later in the movement. As soon as you consider that, you’re down to around dotted minim=54. Then when you get in front of an orchestra and take account of the hall’s acoustic you could easily end up with dotted minim=50 without it sounding in the least bit slow. Whether or not Beethoven’s metronome was faulty, I’m sure that he and other composers who prescribed a metronome mark fell into the trap of not allowing for the space the music needs in order to breathe in performance. Many of the markings are too fast, though some, like the Scherzo of the Eroica, work well when taken literally.
‘What is crucial is that a conductor respects the relationship between the metronome markings. Many conductors take the Scherzo and finale of the Fifth at the same basic tempo. This is a perpetuation of the dreadful fallacy that Classical composers wanted a single tactus throughout a work. Beethoven’s markings here are unambiguous: Scherzo, dotted minim=96; finale, minim=84. The finale must be slower.’ Among conductors of new or recent Beethoven cycles, Haitink, Vänskä and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski all favour briskish ‘modern’ speeds while taking some of the more provocative metronome marks with a pinch of salt, à la Del Mar. Skrowaczewski likes to quote Carl Maria von Weber’s dictum: ‘Never mind about marks on paper, use your brain’. Vänskä has a ‘10 per cent’ rule: ‘I always try a movement with Beethoven’s prescribed tempo. If after trying, and trying again, it doesn’t work, I come down by up to 10 per cent. Never more.’
Not so Thomas Dausgaard, who like David Zinman in his exhilarating but controversial 1998 cycle with the Zürich Tonhalle (controversial both for Zinman’s explosive, whipcrack style and the liberties he takes with Del Mar’s Bärenreiter Urtext), is determined to vindicate the seemingly impossible – and, on the evidence of Nos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, usually succeeds. Like Toscanini 70 years ago, but relatively few conductors since (Karajan and Norrington among the exceptions), he also scrupulously observes Beethoven’s prescribed tempo relationship between the Scherzo and finale of No 5. ‘In many cases, including the Scherzo of No 5, the orchestra and I initially thought some of the metronome markings were ridiculous. But if you use shorter, lighter bow strokes, as players did in Beethoven’s day, they start to make sense and soon become natural. Then it’s a challenge to maintain a single, grand pulse, with only the slightest use of rubato: to create release without slackening, urgency without speeding. You have to do this through phrasing, rhythm, articulation – and in this I have been strongly influenced by specialists in period performance. It’s so easy for us to normalise composers, to make them comfortable. With Beethoven, above all, we must never let this happen.’
‘In my younger days I was an admirer of the post-Wagnerian tradition as exemplified by Furtwängler,’ says Haitink. ‘But now I find Furtwängler very difficult to understand. When I hear his recordings of the slow movement of the Ninth, taking about 20 minutes to my 14, a part of me feels a bit guilty! But life is changing – and these days I simply can’t conduct the movement any slower. On the other hand, though I find Toscanini’s recordings interesting, he’s often too relentless for my taste; and I’m not a great fan of period instruments – I love the "modern" symphony orchestra as it is now, and the routine use of non-vibrato can become as boring as an automatic pilot vibrato. I have found some period recordings of Beethoven symphonies interesting, though one conductor, who shall remain nameless, should be in prison for his treatment of the Fifth!
‘It is true, though, that period performances have made us more aware of the revolutionary aspects of Beethoven, which I have tried to bring out in my performances with the LSO – more than in my earlier recordings with the LPO and the Concertgebouw. The Presto coda of the Eroica, for instance, works at a dangerously fast tempo – the LSO players said it felt like they were storming the barricades. The finale of No 7 is faster, too, almost up to Beethoven’s metronome mark, which used to be thought impossible. It’s the same with the finale of Symphony No 8. This has to go at a breakneck speed, as Beethoven prescribed, otherwise it gets pedestrian. Now I respond more, I think, to this symphony’s wit and humour, which can be quite sardonic and cynical, like the late String Quartet Op 135 in the same key, F major.’
The metronome question remains a notoriously ticklish one. With a few notable exceptions, conductors before the so-called ‘authentic’ revolution seldom took seriously the often provocatively fast markings the composer added to the first eight symphonies in 1817. A famous case in point is the Trio in No 7’s Scherzo, traditionally interpreted (by Furtwängler, Klemperer, Mengelberg et al) at a dirge-like tempo, as if to endorse the attractive but unauthenticated story that Beethoven based the music on an old pilgrims’ hymn. Toscanini and Reiner were the first on record to show that the music could work marvellously well at Beethoven’s given metronome marking of dotted minim=84, a swift speed, over half as fast again as the traditional tempo. At the faster speed the music dances as well as sings and, crucially, unfolds in vaulting eight-bar phrases rather than ponderous two-bar units.
In our authenticity-conscious age it is rare for a conductor to disregard the metronome markings out of hand (though, surprisingly, the newest maestro on the block, Dudamel, reverts to the old, slow tradition in the Trio of No 7). Yet for Jonathan Del Mar, whose Bärenreiter Urtext editions of the Beethoven symphonies have been used (albeit often selectively) in most recent recorded cycles, the metronome can be a bugbear. ‘If you ask me in the quiet atmosphere of my kitchen how fast the first movement of the Eroica goes, I would say about dotted minim=60 – which funnily enough is exactly what Beethoven gave it when he sang it in his kitchen in 1817, 14 years after he composed the symphony. The problem is that this fast tempo takes no account of what the violas are doing, or of the galloping rhythm later in the movement. As soon as you consider that, you’re down to around dotted minim=54. Then when you get in front of an orchestra and take account of the hall’s acoustic you could easily end up with dotted minim=50 without it sounding in the least bit slow. Whether or not Beethoven’s metronome was faulty, I’m sure that he and other composers who prescribed a metronome mark fell into the trap of not allowing for the space the music needs in order to breathe in performance. Many of the markings are too fast, though some, like the Scherzo of the Eroica, work well when taken literally.
‘What is crucial is that a conductor respects the relationship between the metronome markings. Many conductors take the Scherzo and finale of the Fifth at the same basic tempo. This is a perpetuation of the dreadful fallacy that Classical composers wanted a single tactus throughout a work. Beethoven’s markings here are unambiguous: Scherzo, dotted minim=96; finale, minim=84. The finale must be slower.’ Among conductors of new or recent Beethoven cycles, Haitink, Vänskä and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski all favour briskish ‘modern’ speeds while taking some of the more provocative metronome marks with a pinch of salt, à la Del Mar. Skrowaczewski likes to quote Carl Maria von Weber’s dictum: ‘Never mind about marks on paper, use your brain’. Vänskä has a ‘10 per cent’ rule: ‘I always try a movement with Beethoven’s prescribed tempo. If after trying, and trying again, it doesn’t work, I come down by up to 10 per cent. Never more.’
Not so Thomas Dausgaard, who like David Zinman in his exhilarating but controversial 1998 cycle with the Zürich Tonhalle (controversial both for Zinman’s explosive, whipcrack style and the liberties he takes with Del Mar’s Bärenreiter Urtext), is determined to vindicate the seemingly impossible – and, on the evidence of Nos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, usually succeeds. Like Toscanini 70 years ago, but relatively few conductors since (Karajan and Norrington among the exceptions), he also scrupulously observes Beethoven’s prescribed tempo relationship between the Scherzo and finale of No 5. ‘In many cases, including the Scherzo of No 5, the orchestra and I initially thought some of the metronome markings were ridiculous. But if you use shorter, lighter bow strokes, as players did in Beethoven’s day, they start to make sense and soon become natural. Then it’s a challenge to maintain a single, grand pulse, with only the slightest use of rubato: to create release without slackening, urgency without speeding. You have to do this through phrasing, rhythm, articulation – and in this I have been strongly influenced by specialists in period performance. It’s so easy for us to normalise composers, to make them comfortable. With Beethoven, above all, we must never let this happen.’