SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Bach and Beethoven: Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, conductor, Jessica Jones, soprano, Meredith Arwady, mezzo-soprano, Stephen Rumph (Bach) and Richard Cox (Beethoven), tenors, Clayton Brainerd, bass-baritone, Seattle Symphony Chorale, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 29.12.2007 (BJ)

and

Johann Strauss, Jr., Mozart, and Beethoven: Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, conductor, Stewart Goodyear, piano, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 5.1.2008 (BJ)


This was a no-holds-barred Beethoven Ninth. Though you might think that performing the Ninth annually, which the Seattle Symphony does to usher in the new year, could lead to a sense of routine, there was no trace of that in the performance Gerard Schwarz led this time around. Beethoven does not, perhaps, always seem to be one the conductor’s strongest interpretative suits–composers like Mahler and Shostakovich often stir him to his finest achievements–this performance of the “Choral” Symphony had an urgency and commitment that produced a genuine frisson of Beethovenish excitement.

It may even have been that, having broken his ankle a week or so earlier in a skiing accident, Schwarz found the awkwardness of conducting from a sitting position not so much a liability as a stimulus to simply risking everything to communicate his vision–and it is always the taking of interpretative risks in despite of mere physical constraints that makes performances of music as familiar as this worth while. At any rate, far from projecting any feeling of stiffness, the first movement on this occasion went on its unstoppable way forward with a rare sense of white-hot impulse. The scherzo, too, was delivered with a suitably mighty athleticism, though I did feel that the addition of horns to clarify the texture for the subordinate theme (a traditional way of coping with some rather problematic Beethoven orchestration) made the passage sound a touch clumsy.

Schwarz is one of the relatively few conductors able to make the distinction between the Adagio and Andante sections of the slow movement both clearly and naturally, and his marshaling of tempos in the voluminous last movement too was utterly convincing. Here, Joseph Crnko, who had taken over the leadership of the Seattle Symphony Chorale just a few months earlier, had drilled his charges to a formidable level of musical and verbal clarity, and they met the excruciating challenges of the choral part brilliantly (even if one moment that I love–the tenors’ emergence from the texture at the words “den Schöpfer” in the 3/2 Adagio passage–somehow made no impact).

Orchestral execution throughout the evening, which began appropriately with a Bach cantata (No. 171, Gott, wie dein Name, so ist auch dein Ruhm), was both polished and enthusiastic: notable solos included those for first horn in the first movement of the symphony and for fourth horn in the slow movement, where John Cerminaro and Jeff Fair both played beautifully; Justin Emerich’s deft touching in of the delicious second trumpet part in the finale; and Michael Crusoe’s exceptionally clean and crisp interjections in the scherzo. Vocally, the evening was a more mixed success. The tenor and bass in the Beethoven, Richard Cox and the always admirable Clayton Brainerd, both sang their parts splendidly, while Stephen Rumph’s less taxing tenor solo in the Bach was competently given, but the two women sounded less comfortable in their roles. Soprano Jessica Jones slipped so slyly past her famously testing top B near the end that it was gone almost before I noticed it. And mezzo Meredith Arwady’s head-jerkings seem to me the outward sign of a bodily stiffness of the kind that vitiates free tone-production, quite aside from her unhappy way with the German language in the Bach.

One or two such details aside, the Ninth brought the old year’s programming to a highly satisfactory conclusion. The Fifth, a week later, was not quite on the same level. The first movement improved after a rather untidy start, and the slow movement was sensitively realized, with some particularly delicate tone and phrasing from the orchestral basses in that remarkable passage where, for what may well have been the first time in the symphony literature, they are given quite different music from what the cellos are playing. I did think, on the other hand, that Schwarz, so meticulous about tempo relationships in the Ninth, missed the important difference in speed between the last two movement of the Fifth. Beethoven’s metronome marks–which surely have validity at least in relation one to another–make it clear that the finale is meant to be appreciably less rapid than the scherzo, opening with an effect akin to that of a mountain stream majestically opening out when it reaches the plain. On this occasion, the two movements were taken at essentially identical tempos, and the sense of majesty was lost, though Schwarz’s observation of the exposition repeat in the finale provided some compensation.

The main work on the first half of the program was Mozart’s D-minor Piano Concerto, K. 466. The soloist was Stewart Goodyear, whose playing was conscientiously considered and lucid in texture, but somewhat shallow in tone. He sounded like a pianist with commendable stylistic intentions, but never for a moment convinced me that he was really inside the music. And if you are going to make a stylistic statement by playing your own cadenzas (a bit too long, as it turned out) and by volunteering some embellishments from time to time, surely one of those times ought to be in the restatements of the slow movement theme, which was left almost completely unadorned at its returns. The performance was no match in memory for Awadagin Pratt’s altogether more sympathetic and compelling treatment of the late A-major concerto last October. And for once principal timpanist Michael Crusoe could be faulted (or perhaps the conductor should be) for some extraordinarily unrestrained fortissimo strokes early in the first movement.

Much more enjoyable was what we heard before the Mozart. It was a lovely idea to begin a new year with Johann Strauss, whose Blue Danube waltz greeted us with sumptuous textures, eloquently turned solos, and subtly managed rhythmic delineation of the genre’s characteristic 1-2-3 pulse. Odd that what I remember with most pleasure from an evening featuring Mozart and Beethoven should be a Viennese waltz, but so it was. Then again, as serious a master as Brahms, who was no musical snob and who loved this piece, would not have been surprised.

Bernard Jacobson

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