Taking the Fifth

Jaap van Zweden

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Jaap van Zweden
What: Music of Beethoven and Shostakovich
When: January 31 – February 2, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

It was a case of saving the best for last this weekend as the St. Louis Symphony concluded its four-week "Beethoven Festival" with stunning performances by guest conductor Jaap van Zweden of the Fifth symphonies of Beethoven and a composer who greatly admired Beethoven, Dmitri Shostakovich.

The pairing of these two symphonies isn't just a clever gimmick. Both works, as Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, are works "of strife or pathos progressing to exultant finales. That progression makes for a musical drama that is both elemental and thrilling."  That said, these two symphonies come from vastly different worlds—and not just because one was written 120 years after the other.

The Beethoven is certainly the more famous and less ambiguous of the two.  "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony," wrote English scholar and BBC classical music producer Basil Lam back in 1966, "was the first of a new kind of symphony, which, because it expressed in musical terms the optimistic humanist philosophy, became almost the norm in the nineteenth century."  The message of triumph through struggle could not be clearer, especially in the exultant final pages of the last movement where, as Mr. Schiavo writes, "the dramatic passage from darkness to light, from despair to joy—that is the “meaning” of the finale and the goal of the entire symphony."

That's not to say that there aren't plenty of traps for the unwary conductor. Tempi have to be carefully chosen (especially now that "original instrument" guys like Roger Norrington have shown us the kind of excitement you can generate by paying attention to those metronome markings) and the overall interpretation has to maintain a sense of momentum and progress towards that joyous finale without feeling rushed and without neglecting the many wonderful orchestral details Beethoven provided. 

None of this posed a problem for Mr. van Zweden and the orchestra, though.  The first movement was crisp and incisive, setting the stage for the dramatically charged (and bracingly brisk) reading that was to follow.  The second movement Andante con moto was expressive but never lugubrious and the scherzo was appropriately mysterious.  And the finale was, indeed, joyous.

Those orchestral details referred to above came through with great clarity as well.  The entrance of the basses and cellos at the beginning of the fugato section of the scherzo was exceptionally dramatic, I thought, and the winds were lovely throughout.  This was, in other words, a Beethoven Fifth that was perfectly balanced and even, at times, revelatory.  Which, for a piece this well known, is saying something.

Shostakovich's Fifth has a complex history.  The composer wrote it quickly (in three months) in 1937, partly in response to harsh criticism of his surreal and lurid 1934 opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" by the Stalin regime.  "The opera disappeared overnight," notes Michael Tilson Thomas in an episode of the PBS series "Keeping Score" on the Fifth, "and every publication and political organization in the country heaped personal attacks on its composer."

This was at the height of that outbreak of official violence now known as the Stalinist Terror, so being blacklisted didn't just put your career in jeopardy but your life as well.  The composer set out, therefore, to produce a work that would appear, at least on the surface, to meet the demands of heroic socialist realism. He even went so far as to accompany the first performance with an article in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva titled "A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism"—lest there be any doubt that he had Learned His Lesson.

It worked.  Shostakovich was officially rehabilitated and for many years afterwards the Fifth was seen, even in the West, as a classic example of Triumph through Struggle.  It was only many years later, when the composer's private thoughts about the Fifth began to come to light, that it became apparent there might be a deeper meaning to this music—a meaning apparent to the opening night audience in Leningrad in 1937, even if the commissars missed it.  "Many in the premiere audience were seen to weep openly," writes Richard Freed, in his notes for Leonard Slatkin's 1986 recording with the SLSO. "[T]hey wept, Shostakovich himself felt, because 'they understood; they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about.'"

Listening to it now, it's impossible not to hear despair and defiance instead of patriotic uplift, especially in the ominous mock fanfare of the opening and the succession of aggressive march tunes in the finale. The second movement Allegretto is a Mahlerian parody of a waltz, complete with squawking clarinet (nicely done by Dana Haskell in the E-flat clarinet, an instrument that doesn't get many solos, along with fellow single reeders Scott Andrews and Tina Ward) and, unexpectedly, a graceful little violin (David Halen, in a fine moment with the harps). And the third movement Largo clearly feels like lament for all the friends and family the composer lost to the Terror, memorialized with chorale-like string writing (rendered with great intensity by the symphony strings) that calls to mind the liturgy of the banned Russian Orthodox Church.

Mr. van Zweden's interpretation, while not downplaying the music's drama, sounded very much informed by the tragic and defiant subtext of this piece.  The trumpets in the first movement march had an aggressive and mocking snarl, for example, and the mournful little celesta figure that closes the movement was allowed to die into a brief and telling silence.  The dark comedy of the second movement came through loud and clear and the Largo was just as heartbreaking as it should have been.  I can only imagine what it must have meant to an audience in 1937, most of whom would have lost friends and family to the Terror (as did the composer himself).

The biggest challenge with the Fifth, though, is the finale.  Take it one way (usually with faster tempi) and it becomes, as Shostakovich wrote at the time of the work's premiere, "the optimistic resolution of the tragically tense moments of the first movement."  Change it just a bit, and it becomes a parody of militaristic triumphalism.  Mr. van Zweden's interpretation felt like it emphasized the latter while still allowing us to understand what Stalin and company thought they heard.  I'd say that's masterful.

The St. Louis Symphony's intoxicating pair of Fifths will be performed again tonight (Saturday, February 1) at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM at Powell Hall in Grand Center.  The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio at 90.7 FM, HD 1, and streaming from the station web site.  But, of course, it’s best heard live.

Next on the schedule: James Gaffigan conducts with soloists David Halen (violin) and Daniel Lee (cello) in the Brahms "Double Concerto," along with Mendelsshon’s "Symphony No. 3" and "The Fair Melusina Overture."  Performances take place on Friday at 10:30 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, February 7 - 9, at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand.  For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Augmented fifth

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The St. Louis Symphony's "Beethoven Festival" concludes this weekend with Beethoven's Greatest Hit, the "Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67." In an ingenious bit of programming, it's paired with another fifth: the "Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op. 47," composed in 1937 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Jaap van Zweden conducts.

The pairing of these two symphonies isn't just a clever gimmick. Both works, as Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, are works "of strife or pathos progressing to exultant finales. That progression makes for a musical drama that is both elemental and thrilling." The fact that, in Shostakovich's case, the finale might actually have a double meaning just makes things that much more interesting.

But first, the Beethoven. Given the immense popularity this work has enjoyed over the centuries, it's easy to forget that its premiere on December 22, 1808 in Vienna was not a great success. The Fifth was part of a mammoth five hour program that included the Sixth ("Pastoral") Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto, a couple of movements from the "Mass in C," a concert aria ("Ah, perfido"), and the Op. 80 "Choral Fantasy." Beethoven conducted and played the solo piano part in the Concerto and the Fantasy.

There was only one rehearsal before the concert, the musicians weren't up to Beethoven's demands, the auditorium was cold, and by the time the Fifth was played after intermission the audience was exhausted. Things went so badly that at one point the Choral Fantasy had to be stopped completely after a performance error. Not auspicious.

In fact, it wasn't until E.T.A. Hoffmann published an enthusiastic review of the newly published score in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung a year and a half later that everyone began to sit up and take notice of the Fifth. "Radiant beams shoot through this region's deep night," wrote Hoffmann of the music's dramatic effect, "and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy everything within us except the pain of endless longing—a longing in which every pleasure that rose up in jubilant tones sinks and succumbs, and only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with full-voiced harmonies of all the passions, we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits."

More and better-rehearsed performances followed. By the time Hector Berlioz wrote his "Critical Study of Beethoven's Nine Symphonies" he could state that the Fifth was "without doubt the most famous of the symphonies" and "the first in which Beethoven gave wings to his vast imagination without being guided by or relying on any external source of inspiration." Today the Fifth is famous not just on earth but in outer space as well; a recording of the first movement by the Philadelphia Orchestra was part of the Voyager Golden Record, included on the first two Voyager space probes launched in 1977 and now speeding through deep space.

Shostakovich's Fifth had a more successful premiere. Indeed, it's possible that the Fifth saved not only the composer's career but his life as well.

Shostakovich in 1935

When Shostakovich began work on the Fifth, he was in hot water with Stalin's regime. Stalin's rise to power marked a chilling of the intellectual atmosphere in the Soviet Union. All art was expected to serve the political interests of the state and to be as accessible as possible. The exuberant experimentation that followed the overthrow of the Czarist regime was now strictly forbidden. Composers were expected to write upbeat, patriotic stuff—or else.

Unfortunately for Shostakovich, his most popular work at the time was his surreal and lurid 1934 opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". It had been playing to packed houses in Leningrad, but when Stalin decided to attend a performance in Moscow in January of 1936 he was not amused. The dissonant score baffled him and he was reportedly put off by the graphic violence on stage—ironic, considering the total body count of the Stalinist Terror. Stalin left at intermission and the next day an anonymous article on the front page of Pravda (approved and possibly even written by Stalin) condemned the music and libretto in the harshest terms. "Muddle Instead of Music," ran the headline. Not good.

"The opera disappeared overnight," notes Michael Tilson Thomas in an episode of the PBS series "Keeping Score" on the Fifth, "and every publication and political organization in the country heaped personal attacks on its composer." The 29-year-old composer started sleeping in the stairwell of his apartment building, hoping that doing so might spare his family when the secret police came to drag him off to a Gulag or worse. They never did, but he lost many friends and even family members to that outbreak of official violence now known as the Stalinist Terror.

After writing and then withdrawing a Fourth Symphony, Shostakovich finally began work on the Fifth in April of 1937. He completed it in less than three months. He set out to produce a work that would appear, at least on the surface, to meet the demands of heroic socialist realism. He even went so far as to accompany the first performance with an article in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva titled "A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism"—lest there be any doubt that he had Learned His Lesson.

And it worked. Official response to the November 21 1937 premiere by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Evgeny Mravisnky (who would become a great champion of the work) was enthusiastic. Alexei Tolstoy set the official tone in a review in which he praised the "enormous optimistic lift" of the final movement. Shostakovich was officially rehabilitated.

But is the Fifth really the model of Soviet patriotism the commissars thought it was? In his liner notes for the St. Louis Symphony's 1986 recording of the Fifth (with Leonard Slatkin conducting) Richard Freed writes that the work "was born of [Shostakovich's] determination to be a survivor, and to keep his protests private—except insofar as the perceptive listener could hear them in his music." And, indeed, it appears that the audience at the symphony's premiere heard a deeper and less superficial message. "Many in the premiere audience were seen to weep openly," writes Mr. Freed. "[T]hey wept, Shostakovich himself felt, because 'they understood; they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about.'"

Listening to it now, it's impossible not to hear despair and defiance instead of patriotic uplift, especially in the ominous mock fanfare of the opening and the succession of aggressive march tunes in the finale. The second movement Allegretto is a Mahlerian parody of a waltz, complete with squawking clarinet and, unexpectedly, a graceful little violin. And the third movement Largo clearly feels like lament for all the friends and family the composer lost to the Terror, memorialized with chorale-like string writing that calls to mind the liturgy of the banned Russian Orthodox Church.

This disconnect between what Soviet officials heard and what the composer intended is most evident, I think, in the final movement. The Soviet bureaucrats heard triumph, affirmation, and apotheosis. As well they might have, since Shostakovich, at the time of the symphony's premiere, described that finale as "the optimistic resolution of the tragically tense moments of the first movement." Even in the West, symphony program notes and liner notes for recordings described the finale with phrases like "the utmost in orchestral power and brilliance" (David Hall for the 1958 Stokowski recording) and "lusty and boisterous" (an unnamed annotator for the 1962 Karel Ancerl LP).

That all changed with the publication, in 1979, of "Testimony" by the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov. Allegedly based on memoirs of Shostakovich, the book states unequivocally that the final movement of the Fifth was intended as a parody of militaristic triumphalism: "The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,' and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, 'Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.'" Richard Freed writes, as well, that "Shostakovich is on record as having stated that he intended no apotheosis in this finale."

Some recent performances and recordings, as a result, tend to emphasize the caustic and satirical aspects of the Fifth (Mr. Slatkin's is a good example). What approach will Mr. van Zweden take? We won't know until Friday night.

The essentials: Jaap van Zweden conducts the St. Louis Symphony in the "Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 67" by Beethoven and the "Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op. 47" by Shostakovich. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, January 31 - February 2, at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org. The Saturday concert will also be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio at 90.7 FM, HD 1, and on line at stlouispublicradio.org.

Testementary evidence

Brett Dean

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by David Robertson, with viola soloist Brett Dean
What: Music by Brett Dean and Beethoven
When: Friday and Saturday, January 24 and 25
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

The symphony's "Beethoven Festival" continues this week with a powerful reading of Beethoven's "Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, op. 55," (the "Eroica") and brilliant performances of two new works composed by viola soloist Brett Dean, one of which is inspired by Beethoven.

"Testament (Music for 12 Violas)," the concert opener, is the one inspired by Beethoven—specifically by his famous "Heiligenstadt Testament." That is, as most classical fans will recall, a letter Beethoven wrote to his brothers Carl and Johann at the town of Heiligenstadt (now part of Vienna) in which he told of his despair over his increasing deafness and his struggles with thoughts of suicide.

As David Robertson points out in his brief but highly informative opening remarks, composer Dean takes us into Beethoven's auditory world by having the twelve violists play, at first, with rosinless bows. Without rosin to give it friction, the bow glides over the strings, producing what Mr. Dean describes as "an eerie surface noise over the strings." Watching musicians sawing away at their instruments and producing this ghostly sound, then, gives us a feel for what Beethoven might have experienced as his sonic world began to fade away.

It's an interesting conceit and it lends the piece an emotional power that's accentuated by the occasional emergence from the auditory fog of snatches of the first of the "Razumovsky" Quartets—one of many major works (including the "Eroica") that emerged from the crucible of Heiligenstadt. Beethoven's despair and defiance are both audible in "Testament," which got a remarkable performance by the orchestra's violists along with guest artists Caleb Burhans of the contemporary music group Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble member Wendy Richman, and Margaret Dyer and Emily Deans of the camber ensemble A Far Cry.

Mr. Dean's own "Viola Concerto" followed, and I must confess that I found it rather less compelling. Reviewing the world premiere of the concerto by the BBC Symphony in 2005, Andrew Clements of The Guardian described it as "a substantial affair, elegantly proportioned and full of colourful musical imagery." I'd agree that it's substantial, but the substance is, to my ears, all too similar to the work of many other composers of recent vintage, who seem determined to stretch a paucity of brief musical ideas out well past their modest breaking point. There is, moreover, a sameness to that colorful imagery that made it hard to sustain interest in the proceedings.

There is, in short, a great deal of sound and fury in this work, along with a rather spectacular semi-cadenza in the second movement that gave Mr. Dean an opportunity to display his considerable skill on the instrument. For the most, though, I found it all uninvolving, if not off-putting. The final section, featuring a slightly melancholy duet for the soloist and English horn (beautifully played by Cally Banham) was, for me, the best part of this work.

If Heiligenstadt marked a "dark night of the soul" for Beethoven, he clearly emerged from it artistically stronger, with his own unique compositional voice. His first two symphonies were largely in the mold of Haydn and Mozart. But with the "Eroica" Beethoven created, as Paul Schiavo writes in his program notes, "a new musical genre, the Romantic symphony." Those first two big chords are almost like a gauntlet thrown down to challenge established notions of what a symphony should be, and they take us forever out of the Classical era.

Mr. Robertson and the orchestra gave us a thoroughly admirable "Eroica" Friday night. Always an active presence on the podium, Mr. Robertson threw himself into that dynamic, propulsive first movement in a way that produced a tremendously exciting and visceral sense of drama. The funeral march of the second movement exuded tragic grandeur, the scherzo was fleet of foot (with excellent work from the horns), and the grand musical architecture of the finale was beautifully realized. It was altogether as powerful an "Eroica" as one would wish for and brought the concert to a happy conclusion.

Next at Powell Hall, the "Beethoven Festival" concludes with the fifth symphonies of Beethoven and Shostakovich conducted by Jaap van Zweden. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, January 31 – February 2. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

For more information on the music, check out the symphony program notes and my symphony preview article.

Isn't it Romantic?

Andrés Orozco-Estrada
Photo: © Werner Kmetitsch

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada with pianist Louis Lortie
What: Music of von Weber, Beethoven, and Bartók
When: Friday through Sunday, January 17-19, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

This weekend the second of the symphony’s four "Beethoven Festival" concerts brings us music of Beethoven, a younger contemporary of Beethoven, and a 20th century composer who acknowledged Beethoven as a major influence—all done up by guest conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada in that dramatic, late Romantic Austro-German style I associate with the recordings of Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer that were so much a part of my youth.

The concerts open with the overture to the 1823 opera "Euryanthe" by that younger contemporary of Beethoven, Carl Maria von Weber. Unlike Weber's "Der Freischütz," "Euryanthe" has never found a place in the active repertoire, probably because (as Paul Schiavo writes in his program notes) the libretto by German journalist, poet, and playwright Helmina von Chézy (once described by Mahler as a "poetess with a full heart and an empty head") "was an incompetent botch." Still, the overture is a real crowd pleaser, with engaging themes, plenty of dramatic contrast, and a rousing finale.

Here, as in the rest of the program, Mr. Orozco-Estrada made the most of those contrasts—part of that aforementioned echt Romantic approach. The "ghost" theme was (you should pardon the expression) haunting and the fugato run-up to the finale was nicely articulated. Mr. Orozco-Estrada was an exuberant and very physically demonstrative figure on the podium, with big but crisp gestures suggesting a good balance of emotional involvement and intellectual control.

This week's Beethoven is the "Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major," op. 73 (a.k.a. the "Emperor"), a work which bristles with nobility and grace despite being written under the cloud of war and occupation. When Beethoven was writing the concerto in Vienna in 1809, the city was under heavy siege by Napoleon. "[L]ife around me", he wrote, "is wild and disturbing, nothing but drums, cannons, soldiers, misery of every sort." You can even hear a bit of that bombardment, I think, in the heavy piano chords that show up early in the development section of the first movement just as you can hear a kind of impassioned yearning for peace in the wistful second. It's a work of inescapable emotional power.

Louis Lortie

Soloist Louis Lortie channeled all that power beautifully. This was a very visceral performance; Mr. Lortie truly threw himself into the music, with every emotion etched on his face and visible in his body language. Like Mr. Orozco-Estrada, Mr. Lortie gave us a nearly perfect combination of head and heart. Between them, we got a powerfully noble first movement, a transcendent second and, after that wonderfully suspenseful transition, a completely engaging finale.

This sort of big, colorful, high-wattage reading might not work for some of the earlier Beethoven concerti, but for the Fifth I think it's very valid. The piano part, in particular, seems to cry out for the fuller tone and wider range of the modern, metal frame concert grand—a type of piano that wouldn't be perfected until shortly before the composer's death. Mr. Lortie's muscular approach couldn't have been a better fit.

The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was a great admirer of Beethoven, so it seems only right that this weekend's concerts should conclude with what may be Bartók's most famous work, the 1943 "Concerto for Orchestra." Written, like the "Emperor" concerto, at a time of great personal travail, the "Concerto" is nevertheless a dramatic, appealing, and sometimes even humorous work. Indeed, as Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, Bartók, although impoverished and suffering from leukemia, declared that the commission to compose this work was "the wonder drug I needed to bring about my own cure."

And it really is a wonder. The "Concerto" provides an opportunity for the members of the symphony to show off, either individually or in small groups—and on Friday morning they did it beautifully. If I were to list everyone who managed to "shine with a virtue resplendent" this morning, I'd just be listing all the principal and assistant principal players in each section, which might make for tedious reading. So I'll merely note that, once again, the St. Louis Symphony lived up to its reputation as an ensemble of virtuosi. Mr. Orozco-Estrada gave all the featured musicians a chance to stand and receive their applause at the end, which they fully earned.

For his part, Mr. Orozco-Estrada gave Bartók the widescreen, Technicolor treatment the "Concerto" deserves. The little dance of the second movement "Giuoco delle coppie" ("The Game of Pairs," featuring a series a duets) was appropriately jaunty; the interjection, in the third movement "Intermezzo interotto" ("Interrupted Intermezzo"), of a theme from the Shostakovich Seventh Symphony (which Bartók heard in a live broadcast while composing the "Concerto") was thoroughly cheeky; and the finale was charged with wild energy. Lively and completely captivating stuff it was, and a welcome antidote to a chilly and blustery winter morning.

Next at Powel Hall: David Robertson continues the "Beethoven Festival" with the "Symphony No. 3" (the "Eroica") along "Testament" and a "Viola Concerto" by contemporary composer/violist Brett Dean. Mr. Dean will be the soloist for his concerto. The concerts are Friday and Saturday, January 24 and 25, at 8 PM. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

For more information on the music, check out the symphony program notes and my symphony preview article.