By John J. Puccio
If any of Beethoven’s major works benefit from being
played by a period-instrument band following historically informed performance
practices, it’s surely his first two symphonies. He wrote them, after all, with
one foot still firmly planted in the Classical Period and the other foot
starting to move in the direction of Romanticism.
The Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, under the guidance of
concertmaster Bernhard Forck, give us performances that undoubtedly come close
to what Beethoven might have wanted in his day, yet they are not rigid in their
adherence to the composer’s famously controversial tempo markings. If we may
take Roger Norrington’s recordings with the London Classical Players as a
benchmark for following Beethoven almost to the letter, Forck’s interpretations
are more relaxed, a minute or more slower than Norrington in all the fast
movements. By comparison, Norrington may be more exacting but he also sounds
more wooden, more concerned with playing the notes in proper speeds rather than
letting the music flow more naturally as Forck does. In essence, Forck plays both
of these first two Beethoven symphonies somewhere between the composer’s
absolute tempos and what we hear from most traditional readings on modern
instruments. It’s not a bad trade-off and works better here, I think, than in
Forck’s recording of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, which I reviewed some
months earlier, where the near-metronome tempos took away some of music’s
charm.
Anyway, Beethoven wrote his Symphony No. 1 in C major
in the late 1790’s, premiered it in 1800, and published it in 1801. It clearly
shows the influence of two of the composer’s forerunners, Mozart and Haydn, yet
it also shows traces of what was to come in his Third Symphony. That is,
we see dissonance and contrast used more predominately than ever before.
Maestro Forck doesn’t overemphasize these characteristics, but he does play
with them enough to make the audience aware of their significance. While Forck
may observe HIP standards, at the same time he recognizes that this music looks
forward to the Romantic Age and, as occasion arises, he softens it a touch,
“romanticizes” it, as it were. The result is a delight, some of the best early
Beethoven you’ll find.
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| Bernhard Forck |
Beethoven wrote the Symphony No. 2 in D major in
1801 or 1802 and premiered it in 1803 at a time when his deafness was getting
worse, and almost incurable. Not everyone seemed to like the symphony in its
day, one critic writing that it was like “a hideously writhing, wounded dragon
that refuses to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, in the fourth
movement, bleeding to death.” Harsh. Yet it wasn’t just in Beethoven’s time
that the symphony got panned. Even more recently musicologist Robert Greenberg
has written, “Beethoven's gastric problems, particularly in times of great
stress--like the fall of 1802--were legendary. It has been understood almost
since the day of its premiere that that is what this music is all about.
Beethoven never refuted it; in fact, he must have encouraged it. Otherwise, how
could such an interpretation become common coin? And common coin it is.”
“Gastric problems” or not, the music has survived the
barbs nicely through the centuries, and Maestro Forck plays it with a lively,
though never extreme, enthusiasm. It’s remarkable, too, that the orchestra,
playing on period instruments, sound so effortlessly modern. There is none of
the abrasive quality we sometimes hear in period orchestras. And the reduced
size of the ensemble affords excellent transparency and immediacy. These
performances are among those period-instrument/historically informed affairs that
will appeal to folks who usually resist such things. The recording makes
another fine addition to the catalogue.
Coupled with the Beethoven are two sinfonias (early
symphonies) by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), written several decades
before the Beethoven works and chosen, I would imagine, to point up the
differences and similarities those few decades made in the development of
orchestral music. Franck and his team play them with the same restrained ardor
they display in the Beethoven, making them a light and airy listen. However, I
didn’t much care for their positions on the disc, opening the program and then
separating the two Beethoven symphonies. I would have preferred having them set
apart on their own. Still, with a CD player one can play them in any order one
chooses or disregard them altogether.
Artistic Director Rene Moller and sound engineer Tobias
Lehmann recorded the symphonies at Teldex Studio Berlin in September 2018. The
sound has a nice sense of presence, of left-right, back-front stereo spread.
It’s also realistic in its frequency response and dynamics, but it never hits
you over the head with anything unusual: no brightness, no edge, no dullness,
no noise, no closeness.
Although there is nothing spectacular about the sound,
everything seems just right for a smooth, pleasurable experience.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:
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