Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (CD review)

Also, C.P.E. Bach: Symphonies Wq 175 & 183/4. Bernhard Forck, Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin. Harmonia Mundi HMM 902420.

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.

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: