Beethoven festival demands
By Ruth O. Bingham
‘fifth encore’
Special to the Star-BulletinPERHAPS there should have been five concerts in Honolulu Symphony's Beethoven festival, and this the fifth. As it is, the fourth and final concert presents Beethoven's fifth piano concerto, fifth symphony, and fifth (depending on how you count it) overture, Egmont.
The Egmont overture is "incidental" music - that is, music composed to accompany a play rather than symphonic. The play in this case was a five-act tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the Netherlands' struggle for independence from Spanish rule.
The theme of struggling against tyranny resonated deeply with Beethoven, personally as well as idealistically, and the work's overture has found a secure place in symphonic repertoire.
Conductor Samuel Wong captured the tale's tragic victory in an exciting, exuberant interpretation with blaring, somewhat startling brass.
Wong's interpretation of the Fifth Symphony was equally exciting, offering no break in its inexorable drive. Although the trumpets and trombones had some difficulty balancing and blending, the numerous wind solos for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn were beautifully played.
The opening of Beethoven's Fifth elicits considerable controversy among conductors. Wong conducted the first two da-da-da-dums as one statement, observing only the second hold - an interesting wake-up call.
Despite some intonation problems, especially during held notes at the ends of phrases, the symphony offered numerous beautiful moments, notably the four-note theme reducing to one note before the recapitulation in the first movement, the pizzicato section of the third movement, and especially the viola-cello opening of the second movement.
The greatest, however, was surely that crescendo leading to a triumphant C major beginning the finale, a moment Wong called "a shaft of light, a blaze that catapults you into the last movement."
Noted Beethoven interpreter, pianist John O'Conor presented the concert's highlight, Piano Concerto No. 5, or Emperor concerto. Although the piano is the designated solo instrument, it is not always the soloist. Sometimes the piano joins or even accompanies the orchestra. Throughout Sunday's performance, it was difficult for O'Conor to blend with the orchestra. In some passages, orchestral solos - such as the bassoon in the first movement - were all but inaudible.
Perhaps acoustics played a role: The piano's open lid blocked several wind soloists.
That aside, O'Conor's performance was excellent. His mastery of technique precludes the necessity of discussing it. Most impressively, notes were never just notes, no matter how virtuosic the passage. O'Conor revealed a wide variety of nuance and color.
The opening of the second movement was wrenchingly beautiful, like hearing silver bells over snow fields. Wong's slow tempo set off O'Conor's exquisite touch perfectly, but the orchestra had difficulty holding that tempo in the middle of the movement.
With tomorrow's concert, Honolulu Symphony's Beethoven festival draws to a close. During the past four weeks, audiences have enjoyed 10 works by Beethoven and one by Strauss. Of those 10, all but two the Mass in C and the Choral Fantasy are performed regularly, and all but one the Violin Romance - come from Beethoven's so-called "Middle Period."
These past four weeks Honolulu Symphony has celebrated the familiar Beethoven: Works we know and love, works that prove again what we expect of him. Noticeably absent were his more obviously Classical early works, his monumental late works, his quirky (and sometimes downright bad) works. In other words, it has been a festival of "greatest hits."
The problem with familiar works is, of course, that they are familiar, and recordings continually "up the perfection ante" so that even minor mistakes stick out. On the other hand, the joy of familiar works is that new, live performances sometimes offer spontaneous moments of great beauty.
During the festival, Honolulu Symphony has captured many such moments, reminding the audience once again why Beethoven remains one of Western music's greatest geniuses.
In concert
What: "Beethoven's Emperor," Honolulu Symphony concert with pianist John O'Conor
Ruth O. Bingham has a Ph.D. in musicology
from Cornell University, is a free-lance writer and teaches part-time
at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
