(originally
published in Weston Magazine, Winter 2002)
HOLIDAY MUSIC
Well, once
again the year’s most important holiday has come
and gone: the giddy build-up, the celebrations, the inevitable
post-holiday let-down and, oh yes, the shopping. This
year I did my shopping early and so was able to relax
and enjoy the pleasant tingle of anticipation, all the
while basking in the warm glow of smug satisfaction as
I imagined others dashing around at the last minute trying
to find that perfect something for the loved ones on their
holiday shopping list. The holiday I refer to, of course,
is Beethoven’s birthday, December 16th.
Each year to commemorate
this anniversary, I treat myself to a couple of (or three
or six) CD’s of recent Beethoven recordings. I thought
now that all the excitement has died down, this would
be a good time to share my recent choices with you.
As it happens,
this year there has been a spate of new recordings of
the Beethoven Violin Concerto, so I decided that would
be the place to start.
Violinists have
been getting more attractive lately. Compare the faces
of, say, Isaac Stern or Jascha Heifitz to the current
crop and you’ll see what I mean. It’s difficult
to say who is better looking, Hillary Hahn or Joshua Bell.
The twenty-two-year-old Hahn looks as if she just stepped
out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, with that vaguely hunted
look in her sea-green eyes, her dewy complexion framed
by ringlets of auburn hair. You almost expect to see a
halo air-brushed into the background. Joshua Bell, on
the other hand, is so clearly of the modern era that People
Magazine named him one of the 50 Most Beautiful People
in the World. His movie-star looks, in fact, are so striking
– he could pass for Tom Cruise’s better-looking
younger brother – that I always find it a bit of
a stretch to take him seriously as a world-class musician.
But he is. And then there is the ever-glamorous Ann-Sophie
Mutter, whose album covers tend to resemble either Gap
ads, or fashion spreads of evening gowns from the pages
of Vogue.
But, oh yes, the
music. In some ways, I found Joshua Bell’s entry
the least satisfying of the three. Although the playing
is always musical, his technique in this performance is
less than rock-solid. His attack sounds a bit tentative
and the tone, in places, is thin. But this recording is
very much worth listening to for one compelling reason.
In both the first and last movements Bell plays cadenzas
of his own composition, a practice that, sadly, has fallen
largely into disuse.
Historically, the
cadenza was the place in a concerto for the soloist to
let loose and display some originality, in addition to
pure virtuosity. Whether improvised on the spot or written
out in advance, eighteenth and nineteenth century audiences
could generally expect to hear something new from the
performer. And Bell provides two worthy essays –
imaginative, compelling, musically apt, and impressively
played. I wish this were done by more artists today, but
it is rare. Gidon Kremer, in his 1980 recording played
two fascinating cadenzas by the avant-garde Russian composer
Alfred Schnittke, whose deconstructionist approach dissected
the very notion of what a cadenza should be, while incorporating
musical quotes from, among other sources, Beethoven’s
seventh symphony, the Shostakovitch second string quartet,
and the Brahms violin concerto. More recently Nigel Kennedy,
in his 1992 recording, played the Kreisler first movement
cadenza, but provided his own for the third movement,
which has faint echoes of the Schnittke, but nothing much,
in my opinion to recommend it. To tell the truth, it’s
a bore. But Joshua Bell’s cadenzas are so good I
can easily imagine other violinists taking them up, much
as the majority of performers today play the ones composed
by Fritz Kreisler.
Hillary Hahn’s
recording of this concerto is fresh, vivid, and electric.
Here is a young artist to watch. It is a performance of
considerable power and maturity, especially notable from
someone her age. At twenty-two, Hahn plays like a seasoned
virtuoso. She sails through the most demanding passages
with absolute confidence and aplomb. Her intonation is
perfect, her technique dazzling. There is an unfailing
sweetness of tone, coupled with boundless energy. She
plays the Kreisler cadenzas, not that there’s anything
wrong with that, to great effect. All in all, it is a
delicious performance – one I could listen to over
and over. And, I’m pleased to say, the Baltimore
Symphony Orchestra (my hometown band – go team!)
under the direction of David Zinman turns in a splendid
performance. The recording engineer on this disk is also
to be congratulated; the sound on this CD is pristine
and alive. Altogether a joy to listen to.
Beethoven experienced
a great deal of suffering in his life. He was a deeply
lonely man; his love life consisted of a series of unsatisfying
affairs with unattainable women, members of the upper
classes who must surely have been swept away by his passion
and brilliance, but who just as surely could never have
considered marriage with someone of his low birth. Further,
his notoriously bad health left him in physical agony
much of the time. And the devastating loss of his hearing,
the one sense, in his own words, “. . . which should
have been more perfect in me than in others, a sense which
I once possessed in highest perfection, a perfection such
as few surely in my profession enjoy or have enjoyed .
. .” drove him to the brink of suicide. It has been
speculated that the depths of his misery contributed,
at least in part, to the power his music retains to engage
our emotions on such a profound and universal level.
Ann-Sophie Mutter’s
disk, which was recorded live at a New York Philharmonic
performance that I attended last spring, provides another
kind of musical experience altogether. To describe it
as cathartic barely even states the case. Bringing Beethoven’s
tortured inner life to the fore, it is a performance of
shattering, heartbreaking pathos.
Mutter takes enormous
risks in her playing, sometimes stretching the musical
line almost to the point of breaking. Her tone is not
always seductive. (When you can command such rapt attention
through absolute honesty, seduction is hardly necessary.)
Technical perfection is beside the point at this level
of artistry. Nonetheless, the score’s emotional
spectrum is positively lit up by the vast array of colors
she conjures from the violin strings.
She dares us to
follow her into uncharted emotional territory and we are
helpless to resist. Listening was at times a wrenching
experience; at moments I found myself literally flinching
at this display of such naked emotion. It is a performance
by an artist who has known pain and loss in her own life.
But also joy. In the final analysis, we are given a triumphant
vision of life in all its messy grandeur. I should mention
that she, too, plays the Kreisler cadenzas, and in her
hands, they soar.
Another new release
worthy of note is a re-issue, by EMI, of the Beethoven
cello sonatas Nos. 3 and 5 in performances by cellist
Jacqueline du Pré with Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich
at the piano. I imagine that millions more people know
of du Pré from the film Hillary and Jackie, than
from her recordings. But she was unquestionably one of
the great cellists of our era, on a par with Cassals,
Rostropivich, and Yo Yo Ma. There was a generosity of
spirit and a depth of feeling in her playing, and at the
same time a kind of abandon. She played almost as if she
knew her time was limited, that her performing career
would be too brief to hold anything back.
©
Barry Katz 2002
ARRY
KATZ
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