LINCOLN CENTER
David Geffen Hall
New York Philharmonic - Beethoven & Brahms
Alan Gilbert - Conductor
Stephen Hough - Piano
Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor
Brahms - Symphony No. 3
"Beethoven’s magisterial and poetic Emperor Concerto will be performed to perfection by Stephen Hough (“It’s hard not to be a little awestruck by the breadth of [his] passions, to say nothing of his talents” — The Boston Globe). Also on the program: Brahms’s Third Symphony — perhaps his most personal and serene, once compared to “a rainbow after a thunderstorm.”
Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor” (1809)
Composed while Vienna was under siege by Napoleon’s armies, Beethoven’s last piano concerto was born under the sign of war. “What a destructive, unruly life around me! Nothing but drums, cannons, human misery of all sorts!” wrote the nearly deaf composer. To protect his deteriorating hearing from the noise, Beethoven had sought refuge in a friend’s basement and covered his ears with pillows. Yet his despair amid the chaos is never manifested in the score; the music remains defiant, rebellious, triumphant. This concerto concluded one of Beethoven’s most vibrantly productive periods, in which he created an astonishing number of masterpieces (including four symphonies, the Piano Concerto No. 4, the opera Fidelio, the Violin Concerto, the three dramatic “Razumovsky” String Quartets, and two of his great piano sonatas—the “Appassionata” and the “Waldstein”). Sadly, however, it is the only one of his five piano concertos that he could not premiere himself, due to his near-total deafness. Beethoven introduced something new in this piece: where soloists would normally expect to improvise and show off their technical abilities in a cadenza, he wrote in the score: “do not play a cadenza, but immediately begin the following.” He notated an enhanced cadenza-like passage that continues to work the thematic materials and then proceeds to the end of the first movement. After its Leipzig premiere in 1811, a journalist proclaimed: “It is without doubt one of the most original, imaginative, most effective but also one of the most difficult of all existing concertos.” It is ironic that this concerto should come to be known as “Emperor” (the nickname was appended after Beethoven’s death and refers not to Napoleon, but to the work’s regal temperament); it was Napoleon’s power grab, after all, that so disillusioned and infuriated the composer of the Third Symphony that he tore its original title page. Political implications aside, Beethoven’s masterpiece speaks with both majesty and poetry—a crowning achievement indeed.
Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90 (1883)
"Like a rainbow after a thunderstorm" — that's how Johannes Brahms's biographer Karl Geiringer describes the cyclical Third Symphony, in which the rising opening motif returns again and again. It was premiered in Vienna to great acclaim-perhaps more than the composer had experienced before. Brahms was his own worst enemy when it came to his craft; he was a tough critic of his creations, and once finally satisfied with what he had written, he destroyed all traces of the "journey." He threw away more than he left us. But perhaps it's not surprising: in the article "Neue Bahnen" ("New Paths") in the October 28, 1853 issue of the music journal Neue Zeitschrift für MusikSchumann had made a prophecy that probably turned out to be a mixed blessing: according to him, the barely 20-year-old Brahms was "the young blood...the One called to convey the most exalted spirit of our time in an ideal way...the One at whose cradle the Graces and heroes stood guard..." It is no wonder that Brahms waited till he was 42 before he dared to write his First Symphony. When that creative struggle had finally been won, the Second Symphony followed quickly, and in 1883 the present Third was completed. This work has often been called Brahms's most personal symphony. The notes of the opening motif, F, A-flat, F, are said to represent the German words "Frei aber froh" (free but happy) — Brahms's response to his violinist/friend/musical advisor Joseph Joachim's motto "Frei aber einsam" (free but lonely). Whether it's true or not, that musical cell is the foundation and backdrop to much of the symphony. Still, the "free but happy" explanation seems a little off the mark at times, because throughout the symphony Brahms sets up conflicts expressed in the alternation of major and minor keys — as if he felt a greater kinship to the "free but lonely" motto and to an emotional palette that paints in colors of yearning, reflection, and serene acceptance.
Wednesday night’s concert of the New York Philharmonic under music director Alan Gilbert featured a not-very-imperious emperor and a symphonic enigma beyond the dreams of Edward Elgar.
Pianist Stephen Hough gave Beethoven’s robust Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) the kind of introspective reading usually reserved for its more lyrical sibling, the Concerto No. 4. And Brahms’s Third Symphony, as it so often does, stubbornly refused to give up its secrets despite a respectable performance by Gilbert and his players.
Of course Hough’s piano flourishes opened the concerto in grand style, and Gilbert gave full symphonic breadth to the long orchestral exposition (no “waiting room” effect here). After that, however, while Gilbert continued with splendiferous tuttis, Hough took every opportunity to pull back and display his feathery leggiero touch, his elegant chord voicing, and tone that ranged from brightly singing to veiled.
The resulting contrast was agreeable, and served as a reminder that the title “Emperor,” irresistible as it is in this case, didn’t originate with Beethoven, and an all-lights-on approach isn’t the only one that works with this music.
The brief interlude that is the second movement was made briefer still by Gilbert’s interpreting the marking Adagio un poco mosso (Slow, with a little motion) as something more like a brisk Andante. Hough continued his introspective ways, exploring shades of piano and pianissimo, as if the music were an unfolding improvisation rather than a rendering of a score.
One wished some of that sensation had lasted into the finale. In the first phrase of that movement’s theme, Hough put a crashing sforzando where the composer’s notation had implied a slight stress, and the performance proceeded from there with a kind of grim determination instead of the gaiety the music needed.
Beethoven takes some rather long walks in the woods in this movement, and without a feeling of fantasy and unpredictability the pages of modulating scale passages can grow tiresome, as they did Wednesday. But in the movement’s second theme, the pianist provided some welcome lighter moments, sensitively supported by Gilbert and the orchestra.
After intermission, Philharmonic president Matthew VanBesien came onstage to read some acknowledgements and introduce guests, including eleven students from Music Academy of the West who were sitting in with the orchestra for the Brahms performance. One wouldn’t normally mention such ceremonials in a review, but in this case the presence of visiting young musicians might help explain the difficulty Gilbert had with coordination and balances in the symphony’s first movement.
Anyway, thank goodness for the repeat sign at the end of the first movement’s exposition, because Gilbert, the Philharmonic, and their guests went back and played the whole thing again, with much improved results.
Still, Brahms’s Third was perhaps not the best choice for a hospitality piece, since even in ideal circumstances it’s challenging for an orchestra and conductor to find an expressive line that flows through the piece’s volatile episodes, raging one moment and caressing the next. It’s even harder when one is micro-conducting the details, as Gilbert sometimes did on Wednesday, possibly to bring the visitors along.
The clarinet had a tough time in the second movement, its opening theme masked by the accompaniment of horns (no surprise there—Gilbert seems to have a Manhattanite’s ability not to hear horns honking) and bassoons, and its later theme taken over by a bassoon that was supposed to be discreetly doubling in the background. In general, wind imbalances made the movement’s line hard to follow.
Things looked up in the third movement, where, rather than try to figure out the tempo marking Poco allegretto (literally, “slightly a little bit fast”), Gilbert just gave the music a natural swing and surge, and a listener could relax and go with the flow for a few minutes.
By the finale, the orchestra was sounding more pulled together and balanced. The opening bars murmured mysteriously, the fortes pounced, and the Brahmsian fist-shaking was fierce and incisive. In Brahms’s day, this seemingly incoherent bundle of shouts and muttering, with its oddly wan conclusion, had even opponents of “program music” reaching for metaphors and stories, or psychoanalyzing the composer.
One would like to say this music is well understood today, but it still isn’t, and it’s a rare performance that affords more than a glimpse of what Brahms was getting at. On Wednesday, a bit more grace in the second theme would have been a welcome contrast with all the rage around it, and maybe unlocked a meaning or two. But among all the things Elgar may have envied about his contemporary Brahms, the ability to keep a secret was right up there.
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