The other weekend, we went to Wolf Trap for a performance of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Ninth Symphony and also of Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes (from Peter Grimes).
The pieces by Britten were pretty Britten-y. Not to knock him, because, I mean, c’mon – he wrote The War Requiem which is an amazing, mindblowing work. But he’s a sentimental sort of composer and these were small, sentimental works.
The Egmont Overture was new to me. It was composed for a production of a tragedy by Goethe named… Egmont. A political play about resistance to oppressive authority, it was right up the alley of the man who composed the Eroica Symphony. And what a great piece. So absolutely moving. And yes, it was very, very political. You didn’t need to know anything about the play or the background to know that this work was making a political statement.
Maybe it was because I was reading Geoffrey Hill’s A Treatise on Civil Power that I wondered if the best lens through which to view Beethoven’s works was political. Is Beethoven a primarily political artist?
Also, I thought about a line from a movie starring the late River Phoenix, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, entitled Running on Empty. It’s a good movie, blah, blah. But what came to me was a line where River Phoenix’s character, to answer his music teacher’s question as to the difference between Beethoven and some piece of popular music (the Beatles or someone like that). ‘You can’t dance to Beethoven,’ he said.
But that’s not really true is it? Because you can’t help but dance to Beethoven. Yes, yes, I understand the whole issue of rhythm, but when Beethoven is played, watch your body and watch the bodies around you. Everyone will start attempting to tap and sway with the music. They’ll fail, of course, but they will try. And so will you. Beethoven makes you want to dance!
During the Ninth, everyone tries to become a conductor, gesticulating in the air because it impels you towards motion, towards action! (political action?) It is more than merely hopeful. It is a rejection of hopelessness in the face of valid reason for despair, and in that, it is inherently religious.
This month, I was lucky enough to see two of this century’s most lauded violinists: Anna-Sophie Mutter and Joshua Bell.
Bell played a beautiful Mendelssohn violin concerto in E minor, while Mutter played a Sebastien Currier piece (composed for her) called Time Machines and a Dvorak violin concerto.
Mendelssohn is just great, and a violin concerto by him, especially one in a melancholy minor key, is always going to be great. Bell was showy and brilliant, but the comparison to Mutter was instructive. The pieces she played – a contemporary and fragmented piece that was as much a dialogue between violin and orchestra as it was a concerto for violin and orchestra, and a good, romantic, but not very (to my ears) exceptional early violin concerto by Dvorak – were far less showy than the moody, frantic Mendelssohn but you could tell: Mutter plays better with others. Her interaction with the orchestra… you could tell the difference. Just because I love Mendelssohn, I liked the music played by Bell better than that played by Mutter, but I suspect that Mutter is a better performer, overall, to see. Or, at least, a better example of classical music’s cooperative qualities.
Friday night, we saw Joshua Bell play Mendelssohn’s concerto in E minor for violin and orchestra, followed by Hindemith’s When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d (a setting of selections from Whitman to music).
Naturally, Bell was the real draw. He was very ‘present’ during the first movement, but didn’t always impose himself on the second and third movements. That said. Joshua Bell. Wouldn’t have missed it. And, c’mon. You just can’t go wrong with a Mendelssohn violin concerto. It’s like sex. Great sex is, well, great. Bad sex… is still pretty good. And Bell makes it like sex with a supermodel, so even if the sex is not good, well, there a supermodel.
The Hindemith piece was very moving. There was a huge chorus and two leads, a baritone and a mezzo-soprano, so the tones were pretty deep and necessarily somber. The Whitman selections were about the Civil War and the death of Lincoln, so it was almost an elegy, but a distinctly American elegy. Hindemith may have been a German expatriate, but When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d inspired a sort of patriotism in me.
Anyway. You’re not supposed to ever take photographs inside the hall, but I did anyway.
Teatros Amazonas… in the Amazonian city of Manaus.
the coffee philosopher 