SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW
 

Beethoven Ninth and Brahms: Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, conductor, Amanda Pabyan, soprano, Kathryn Weld, mezzo-soprano, Jason Collins, tenor, Charles Robert Austin, bass-baritone, Seattle Symphony Chorale, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 30.12.2009 (BJ)


There are perhaps sceptics out there who think that performing the same work every season–as the Seattle Symphony does with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the year’s end–is pointless. This would certainly be true of anything less than a masterpiece. But with something like the Ninth, repeated traversals can combine continued excellences with fresh insights to illuminating effect.

I have had occasion in previous years to praise the balanced expressive fervor Gerard Schwarz brings to the work, the eloquence of the outer movements, the rhythmic zest of the scherzo, and the way he, unlike many conductors, realizes Beethoven’s subtle distinction of tempo between the two themes of the slow movement. All these virtues were present again this time around, along with burnished sound from the orchestral tutti, and the familiar excellent contributions from Jeffrey Fair and Richard Pressley in the unfamiliar passages of prominence Beethoven allots in this work to fourth horn and second trumpet.

But there were other factors too that contributed to making this the finest Ninth yet in the five seasons since I arrived in the Seattle area. In broad interpretative terms, the conductor’s emphasis on long unbroken lines made me more aware than before of the surpassing gentleness that underlies the first two movements’ drama. Combined with a rapt and eloquent reading of the slow movement, this resulted in a more than usually electrifying contrast when the rattling fanfare that begins the finale burst on the ear. And the power of that movement was strengthened by a choral performance that surpassed anything in previous years–the massed sound was already good, but this time I felt that chorus-master Joseph Crnko had definitively made the Seattle Symphony Chorale his own. Touchingly offset by moments of quiet reflection, the sheer populist elan –I might even say crudity–of the music was overwhelming. The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams memorably observed of this movement that “Beethoven evidently considered that the stars were jolly good fellows, fond of a rousing chorus, fond of a glass of beer and a kiss from the barmaid.” Style, I have often felt, is a matter of knowing when you are being vulgar–Beethoven knew it when he wrote this music, and Schwarz knows it when he conducts it.

The impact of the whole was further enhanced by the best solo quartet to tackle the piece in recent years. Charles Robert Austin delivered himself of a genuinely thrilling top F-sharp in his compellingly phrased opening solo; Jason Collins properly emphasized the disjointed phrasing the interjected rests demand in his marching-song; and the less prominent women’s solos were finely realized–aside from a little cheating on the soprano’s problematic top B near the end–by Amanda Pabyan and Kathryn Weld.

After such thrills, it was no surprise that the last notes were answered by a collective roar of equal strength from a clearly delighted audience. But those thrills must not let me forget the pleasures of the evening’s first half. In his annual quest for a suitable companion-piece to the Ninth, Schwarz this time hit upon the little orchestrally accompanied suite Brahms made out of his graceful and charming Liebeslieder waltzes. Even though I wrote a book about Brahms, I have to confess that I have never heard this version before. And despite the fact that Brahms left my favorite one among the waltzes–the poetic and liltingly syncopated Nicht wandle, mein Licht–out of the suite, it made for highly enjoyable listening.

Bernard Jacobson