DCist Goes to the Symphony
We thank my Ionarts colleague Jens F. Laurson, who has stepped in to contribute this week's installment of DCist Goes to the Symphony, a review of a concert I had to miss because of a last-minute conflict.
The National Symphony Orchestra’s season finale attempts to pull out all the stops it didn’t quite manage so far, and this week’s run of all-Beethoven concerts under the baton of Kurt Masur is an auspicious run-up to the gargantuan, grandiose über-symphony, the Mahler Eighth, next week. The East German Kurt Masur is one of the most esteemed conductors in the business, a no-nonsense European orchestra leader of the old guard. He spent years heading the famous Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (where he was a successor of Felix Mendelssohn, the very prototype of the repertoire conductor) and played a prominent role during the 1989 Monday Protests in Leipzig that were the beginning of the end of the East German dictatorship. After reunification he went on to helm the New York Philharmonic for eleven years and currently presides over the London Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de France.
Masur’s Beethoven credentials are impeccable (violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter won’t play the Beethoven concerto if he can’t conduct it for her), and his treatment of the ‘grand master’ commands respect, even if it does not necessarily elicit excitement. Masur is what is often called a Kapellmeister – a term used for mostly central European conductors that combines admiration for their skill with patronizing, negative connotations about their middle-of-the-road interpretations.
That, in short, describes the Beethoven that he brought forth with the NSO on Thursday evening: the Leonore Overture no. 3 and Symphonies no. 1 and 7 were well executed, meticulously thought out, respectfully treated, tastefully judged. There is no doubt that this was among the best NSO Beethoven performances the last few seasons have seen. In all three works the orchestra supplied enough dedication to avoid the kind of autopilot playing they have lately slipped into with Leonard Slatkin at the rudder.
Leonore III is the third of four overtures that Beethoven composed for the then-eponymous opera, known in its final form as Fidelio. If the opera itself intriguingly hovers between genial and a near-failure, there is no doubt that that his second-to-last draft for the overture is a masterpiece of condensed dramatic, evocative music. A ‘tone poem’ before the term was ever used. As a musical summary of the opera’s action it works almost too well, and Beethoven ultimately decided to go with something completely different, the shorter, more abstract Fidelio Overture. The music of Leonore III, however, is too good to discard, and it has always been a staple in the concert hall and is usually grafted into the opera itself, dramatically incongruent but musically divine, in the second act. Maestro Masur’s reading was dramatic and graphic with its seamless, finely graded swells, showing off the orchestra’s attention to detail and nuance.
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 1 would be a proud work in any composer’s output, but it and Symphony no. 2 suffer from comparison with the seven that followed them. Masur’s broad, weighty reading gave it the extra meat that made it seem on more equal footing with its successors… at least for the duration of the performance. Substantive and with dignity, avoiding the ponderous, it pleased even in direct neighborhood to the superior overture. Putting the first symphony in its place, though, hardly took more than the first dozen bars of the 7th Symphony. It is pointless to call it a “great” symphony because symphonies three through nine all deserve that epithet. Consider it simply one of those symphonies that music could not be without. Masur, ever steady, ever in control – despite hand movements that were something less than a model of precision – gravely worked his way through its four movements of rich contrast and diverse moods. The playing of the NSO was fine if hardly excellent (thin brass with some infelicitous notes, occasional imprecision of the ensemble work), yet even these quibbles hardly detracted from a wonderful performance of Beethoven as we imagine Beethoven should sound. You won’t go to hear either Friday (June 2, 1:30 p.m.) or Saturday’s performance (June 3, 8 p.m., apparently sold out) to hear ‘new things’ – but to hear the ‘real thing’ done well.