Fast pace hinders Beethoven's 9th
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How powerful is Beethoven's Symphony No. 9? When Sony and Phillips constructed the CD in the late 1970s, they made it conform to the famous work, to make sure a single disc could hold an entire performance of it.
Had they known conductor Manfred Honeck's blistering tempos, they might not have worried so much about the parameters.
Last night at Heinz Hall, the music director and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra returned after a successful European Tour to perform the "Choral" Symphony, moved to this weekend because of another international event, the G-20. It was yet another personal mark on a masterpiece by the Austrian conductor. I imagine that some will love it and others won't -- the kind of healthy collection of responses a music director should engender.
I personally felt the famous finale -- the movement that first introduced singers in a symphony singing Beethoven's folk-like setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy" -- bounded along much too quickly. Under Honeck's driving tempos, the voices of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh and soloists became like instruments, struggling to get the message and thwarting their very presence. On the other hand, I very much appreciated the faster tempos in the earlier movements.
Mr. Honeck's tempos are probably closer to those Beethoven wanted. While we can't take the metronome markings at face value with a composer who was essentially deaf when he placed them, most scholars and conductors think the piece has slowed down over the years. Under Mr. Honeck, the mystery of the opening of the symphony -- music seeming to flow out of nothingness -- was diminished, but the energetic flow of the rest of the first movement was stunning.
The faster speeds brought out elements you don't typically hear, much like how speeding up the rate of different photos creates the illusion of movement. The PSO was catlike in its leaping from phrase to phrase. To me, this was a statement of the fury of belligerent humanity that Beethoven would later exhort to become brothers in the "Ode." Likewise was Mr. Honeck's galloping second movement scherzo, with timpanist Christopher Allen's potent punctuations arriving like cannon shots.
First Published June 5, 2010 12:36 am
