BTVN WOCHE (4) – Meta4/Zimmermann/Saksala/Mustonen - Beethoven and Mustonen, 9 February 2020

Kammermusiksaal Hermann J. Abs, Bonn

Beethoven: Violin Sonata no.8 in G major, op.31 no.3

Beethoven: String Quartet no.5 in A major, op.18 no.5

Olli Mustonen: Sextet (world premiere)

Beethoven: String Quartet no.16 in F major, op.135

Antti Tikkanen, Mina Pensola (violins)

Atte Kilpeläinen, Tabea Zimmermann (violas)

Tomas Djupsjöbacka (cello)

Janne Saksala (double bass)

Olli Mustonen (piano)

BTVN WOCHE 2020 took a different path from predecessors, offering in Beethoven’s anniversary year his music alone – ‘Beethoven Pur’ – in order to present the entirety of his chamber music. However, no such celebration would be complete without at least a glance to the present and future, so for its final instalment, Tabea Zimmermann’s final concert as artistic leader, we were treated also to the world premiere of a newly commissioned work from Olli Mustonen, a Sextet for two violins, two violas, cello, and double bass, the string quartet Meta4 joined by Zimmermann and Janne Saksala.

First, however, we heard Antti Tikkanen and Mustonen as pianist for Beethoven’s Violin Sonata, op.31 no.3. A first movement infused with nervous energy, skittish and excitable even to the point of violence both confounded reasonable expectations and set the tone for much that was to follow, both in this work and in the concert as a whole. The second movement was likewise full of contrasts, both within and between sections, however defined. I confess that I wondered initially whether it were simply too much, but it grew on me – and far better the shock of the new than comfortably derivative Schlamperei. There was no doubting that both these musicians cared. Ebullient, extrovert, highly insistent, the finale proceeded somewhat in the vein of the first movement, yet fulfilling nonetheless its structural role. This was, then, like Meta4’s performances in an earlier concert, as well as those to come, a highly rhetorical reading the likes of which I should not necessarily want to hear often, but which seized the moment for itself.

The op.18 no.5 Quartet proved freely unpredictable, as by now I had learned to expect. Whether I could quite discern a line in the first movement was at best an open question, but such rediscovery was never dull. A similarly free second movement seemed to cohere better, its drunken, rustic trio full of charm and wit. One needed to listen intently, but so one should. The minuet’s reprise, heard through the trio, proved a little crazier still. (Largely) winning eccentricity characterised the third movement, traversing an extraordinary range of emotions, styles, possibilities. This, I felt, truly got to the heart of the players’ vision: a divine and at times rambunctious comedy. The helter-skelter creation of euphony and contest between euphonies heard in the finale proved quite a ride, fascinating and, I think, revealing so long as one held on tight.

Mustonen’s three-movement Sextet was clearly intended to be heard with and in relation to Beethoven. A meta-work? Most probably, but that doubtless only rephrases the question(s). The angular rhythms of the opening suggested Beethovenian gesture reimagined, subsequently balanced and/or contrasted with a more ‘feminine’ – to employ nineteenth-century gendered language – second subject equivalent, which nonetheless seemed to grow from what we had heard before. What I learned immediately after formulating that impression, however, was that it was better to listen on whatever the work’s own terms might be, for that Beethoven comparison quickly proved unhelpful, indeed quite wrong. We may still often find our bearings in the musical world with a Beethovenian compass – more often than not, the ‘Beethoven’ of the later nineteenth century – but at some point we need to let go. Will ‘Beethoven’ let us, though? Material related to those opening gestures kept on returning; I even fancied I heard something related to the Fifth Symphony. Ears and memories can (productively) play tricks. Then came a glacial close, with little or no harmonic change.

Beethovenian derivations became clearer in the second movement; or was I now listening differently? What did those ghosts of Beethoven scherzi mean? What could they mean, perhaps above all that of the Ninth Symphony? And did they not always possess more potential meanings than any one performance or reading would allow? Accompagnato chords in remembrance of the entry of the voice in the Ninth heralded the third and final movement. Answers were different, if not necessarily unrelated. Again, has that not always been the case for ‘Beethoven’? How do we connect fragments, remembered or misremembered? And who, as composers, performers, listeners, and yes, scholars too, are ‘we’? After all, Beethoven’s music has never gone out of fashion, never been neglected. A little violence here and there may be just what it needs. Then, to rebuild or not?

If hardly ‘traditional’, whatever that may now mean, the first movement of Beethoven’s final quartet, op.135, seemed less wilful and, more importantly, more convincing in its liberties than that of op.18 no.5 had. Or was that a matter of having been preceded by the Mustonen Sextet? How could I ever really know, and why should I care? Whatever the answers to those unanswerable questions, Beethoven’s musical procedures here seemed clearer to me, although, this music being what it is, there was always much to challenge. The music seemed from the outset to be developing themes of which we had prior knowledge: in medias res, however much we might cling to the idea of ‘exposition’. A second movement of kinetic energy proved so much of a whirlwind that a vortex beckoned, yet never quite materialised. (Should that be dematerialised?) Seraphic fragility that nonetheless found strength to construct something from itself characterised its successor. Then came the ultimate question, both answerable and not: ‘Muß es sein?’ This was music on the brink, even if we knew not of what, the query followed by release and intensification. The path hereafter would be difficult though never obscure. There was struggle to be had, yet on one level, at least: ‘Es muß sein’.

BTHVN WOCHE (3) – Elias Quartet: Beethoven, 8 February 2020

Kammermusiksaal Hermann J. Abs, Bonn

String Quartet no.9 in C major, op.59 no.3

String Quartet no.14 in C-sharp minor, op.131

Benjamin Nabarro, Duncan Grant (violins)

Simone van der Giessen (viola)

Marie Bitlloch (cello)

Grave fragility, almost yet not quite without vibrato, characterised the introduction to the first movement of the third Razumovsky Quartet in this performance from the Elias Quartet. Then came the exposition proper, as if a command to ‘snap out’ of such melancholy or worse, to bring us into the present. Its good humour, however, did not betoken any lack of serious. This was cultivated playing, full of life, somewhere between brusque and boisterous. Later on, the infectious mystery of Beethoven’s – and the players’ – trilling prepared us for a recapitulation that had more than a few surprises left to spring. The second movement was eerily founded on a cello pizzicato (Marie Bitlloch) both angry and sweet. An inward turn of darker harmonies was rightly unnerving, but this was quite rightly a performance of many voices and moods. That underlying onward trudge that seems Schubertian, yet which it seems strange actually to call so, was in sensitive, comprehending hands throughout. A relatively relaxed minuet – Beethoven marks it ‘grazioso’ – offered something of a backward, even neoclassical glance, giving way to a tenser trio, teeming with counterpoint and seeming preparing the way for the finale. This frenetic performance captured its madness, although there were times when it seemed to run away with itself before regrouping.

The strangeness of the key, C-sharp minor, especially for strings, registered immediately in the performance of the op.131 Quartet; so too did the rarity, in every sense, of Beethoven’s writing therein. ‘Unearthly’ may be a cliché – what is not when writing about this music? – yet how else might one characterise such seraphic sweetness as was to be heard in this work’s extraordinary first movement? ‘The most melancholy thing ever said in music,’ according to Wagner: who are we to disagree? Bach’s abiding presence, crucial to both composers in later life, was revealed in struggle and sweetness alike. Much the same might be said of the next two movements, if not on the surface, then beneath, where the truest action and sentiment are to be found. Fragility, even further fracture, beneath the already fractured surface of the third told of music that will perhaps always resist a more complete understanding. The central ‘Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile’ heard no taming of its harmonies, its procedures the more enigmatic the more one listened. And yet, it often remained recognisably rooted in the eighteenth century: a paradox perhaps beyond even dialectical understanding. It was a rarefied form of release, yet release nonetheless, that we heard in the scherzo. Though marked ‘Presto’, I think it was taken less hurriedly than the finale of the earlier quartet (‘Allegro molto’); at any rate, the tempo seemed better suited both to work and to performance. A sixth movement that seemed to reimagine aspects of the first, in still richer yet no less rare tones, prepared the way for a strongly related finale, defiant yet once more sweet-toned. As an encore, we heard a waltz composed by violinist Duncan Grant for the wedding of two of his friends.

BTVN WOCHE (2) – Tabea Zimmermann and friends: Beethoven, 7 February 2020

Kammermusiksaal Hermann J. Abs

Serenade in D major for flute, violin, and viola, op.25

Quintet in E-flat major for piano, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn, op.16

Horn Sonata in F major, op.17

Septet in E-flat major, op.20

Adam Walker (flute)

Lucas Macías Navarro (oboe)

Vicente Alberola (clarinet)

Guilhaume Santana (bassoon)

José Vicente Castelló (horn)

Daniel Sepec (violin)

Tabea Zimmermann (viola)

Tomas Djupsjöbacka (cello)

Janne Saksala (double bass)

Olli Mustonen (piano)

A lovely concert of early Beethoven chamber music from a fine ensemble: just the thing for a cold February night. The D major Serenade, op.25, for flute, violin, and viola is a curious work and a rarity in concert, but worth hearing from time to time – and not only in order to wonder at what point one would have guessed the composer, if one did not know already. Its opening Entrata here sounded bright and jolly, Adam Walker’s solo flute and responses from Daniel Sepec and Tabea Zimmermann transporting us to the world of a summer’s eve outdoor entertainment. If that music might often have been from the generation of Bach’s sons, brusque (and other) surprises in the following minuet and trios may have suggested the 1790s after all. Sepec’s fiddling in the first trio, fully matched by Zimmermann, proved quite infectious. Changes were nicely run through the three hearings of the somewhat strange minuet, such variation and more generally comprehending performance ensuring that it never outstayed its welcome. That lack of predictability was followed up in the third movement, ‘Allegro molto’, as characterful, cultivated, and collegiate as the ensuing ‘Andante con Variazioni’. The vigorous whirlwind enveloping us in the scherzando fifth movement and its somewhat ghostly trio suggested Beethoven more strongly than anything heretofore, splendid preparation for a poised ‘Adagio’ that flowed without ever sounding hurried. An irresistibly good-humoured finale rounded things off in infectious and unaffected fashion.

If the op.16 Quintet for piano and wind instruments were written earlier than the Serenade, it does not necessarily sound so. Mozart’s influence is unsurprisingly strong, but the first movement unquestionably signalled fond recollection rather than imitation. Its introduction was spacious, perfectly balanced, and directed. Here, as elsewhere Olli Mustonen offered more than a hint of steel on piano: perhaps not to all tastes, but his refusal to condescend, let alone to smooth out, and the evident thoughtfulness of his decisions proved ever admirable. A sharply etched opening to the exposition foretold a performance that would have me smile and sit up to attention in equal measure. The slow movement, equal in clarity, was aptly more yielding in character. Its successor was every inch the post-Mozartian hunting finale. If at times, one might have thought one were listening to a concerto, that is Beethoven’s doing, no quirk of performance.

I have sometimes heard disparaging remarks about the Horn Sonata, op.17. I genuinely cannot understand why; it is a gem, always meriting performance, especially one so refreshing as this. The vigorous approach presented by Mustonen and José Vicente Castelló offered proved quite different from that in a more Mozartian performance I heard last year from Daniel Barenboim and Radek Baborák. It was certainly an account to take no prisoners, more aggressive in the pianism, but with greater precision too. Boldness of contrasts in all three movements suggested once more a commendable seriousness of purpose, however early or allegedly ‘slight’ – it is not – the work may be.

The Septet is a glorious and gloriously unqualified masterpiece: so it sounded here, although the first movement did not quite catch fire for me in the way the rest did. There was much to admire and indeed to love, the first subject making me smile, as too did Beethoven’s cunningly laid surprised in the recapitulation. It basked in Mozart’s glory, yet there was no shadow cast, only sunlight. A relatively swift ‘Adagio cantabile’ won through, recognising that the key here is ‘cantabile’. Get that right, as these players did, and a range of tempi choices can work. Harmony arose, so it seemed, from the combination of instrumental lines, sung as only instruments (as opposed to voices) can. The Minuet swung swiftly, yet with charm. I especially enjoyed Tomas Djupsjöbacka’s cello interventions and the bubbly Harmoniemusik of the trio. A potentially awkward slip later on was admirably well covered, to the extent even of offering interest of its own. The ‘Andante con Variazioni’ swung in a different yet surely related way. Violin and viola duetting, soon joined by the cello proved just the ticket in the first variation. The captivating urgeny of the minor-key variation seemed to hint at a Romantic, Mendelssohnian future. Taken at a proper pace, yet with all the space in the world, the Scherzo received a model reading, somehow all the more thrilling the second time around. Its trio, led by wondrously suave cello, offered contrast and complement in equal measure. A portentous introduction built up tension very nicely for the finale, released with a genuine necessity that permitted all soloists to shine and to blend. There were some glorious vistas to take in en route, Sepec’s cadenza arguably first among equals. They never distracted, though, instead contributing to an excellent conclusion of true chamber music.

BTHVN WOCHE (1) – Meta4: Beethoven, 6 February 2020

Kammermusiksaal Hermann J. Abs

String Trio no.3 in D major, op.9 no.2

String Quartet no.6 in B-flat major, op.18 no.6

String Quartet no.8 in E minor, op.59 no.2

Antti Tikkanen, Mina Pensola (violins)

Atte Kilpeläinen (viola)

Tomas Djupsjöbacka (cello)

Bonn’s annual Beethoven-Haus festival – BTHVN, as the composer occasionally signed himself – offers what may be a unique and certainly a rare opportunity: to hear Beethoven’s entire chamber music. Alas, I shall not be able to do that, but in hearing the last of four weekends, and thus the climax of Tabea Zimmermann’s musical direction, I shall nevertheless manage to hear old favourites in new surroundings and also, I hope, make some new favourites too. In other words, the slogan of the broader BTHVN2020 festivities, ‘Beethoven NEU entdecken’, may well be fulfilled: Beethoven newly discovered. As Malte Boecker, Director of the Beethoven-Haus, reminded me when we met to discuss the year's events, for all that we hear of Beethoven's ubiquity, it is often more a matter of 'the same 25 works' being performed again and again. This selection of three works for strings from the Finnish ensemble, Meta4, offered some familiar music and some considerably less so.

First up: the second of the op.9 string trios, Beethoven’s third work for string trio forces. (One may or may not account the Serenade, op.8, ‘a’ string trio, but it is certainly for violin, viola, and cello.) This, I imagine, would have been unfamiliar music to much of the audience; it is hardly the Beethoven I know best. The players (Mina Pensola, Atte Kilpeläinen, and Tomas Djupsjöbacka) imbued their performance with a true sense of, yes, discovery, from the brief yet expectant first-movement introduction to a highly dramatic, even at times quasi-improvisatory account of the finale. These were performances of intense physicality, notes veritably flying off page and bows. Not that that precluded attention to detail, but that detail was often presented in highly rhetorical fashion: the first movement development section, for instance, which seemed as engaged in development of rhetoric as in that of the material ‘itself’. The Andante quasi allegretto spoke of invention in sadness and sadness in invention, yet also of consolation, navigating an often difficult path between the two. Indeed, that Beethovenian refusal to take the easy path characterised much of what we heard. If intonation were not always perfect, should Beethoven be perfect? Should he even be polished? Mysteries were not resolved; nor, perhaps, should they ever be. A Menuetto finely poised between eighteenth-century roots also offered dynamic propulsion, not only or even principally a matter of tempo, that undeniably looked forward to the Beethoven to come. Its trio, likewise the finale, toyed with expectations, on occasion even defying them.

If the following account of the op.18 no.6 Quartet sounded more Classical, then that is surely a matter of genre, of stronger affinity with the tradition of Mozart and Haydn. (Mozart, of course, wrote a towering masterpiece of a String Trio, but it has little obvious in common with Beethoven’s essays in the genre.) The freshness of Beethoven’s contribution shone through nonetheless, once more with a quasi-improvisatory approach to some of Beethoven’s writing – the first-movement development, for instance – that will not have been to all tastes, but certainly had one listen. Opposites were starkly portrayed in the slow movement, underlined by yet certainly not confined to withdrawal and application of vibrato and shortness (or otherwise) of bowing. How to reconcile, so that a sense of the whole was conveyed too? Again, the path taken was far from easy, far from conventional. However, so long as one truly listened, it was there. The scherzo offered a whirlwind of dance, even – especially? – through metrical dislocation. Beethoven’s finale traversal of ‘La Malincolia’ opened expansively, full of tension and contrast as in the slow movement. Too much? Perhaps. There was, however, a genuine fascination to this performance that could not be shaken. Relative lightness of relief and a later surge of dramatic vigour offered further turns of the temperamental screw.  

The second half was devoted to the second of the three Razumovsky Quartets. Writing was tighter here, of course, every note being made to count in every direction; performances matched that ambition and achievement. The players’ attention to rhetoric again marked this out as an unusual yet rewarding performance. There was no question of the first movement ceasing to develop once the formal development section was over; such, after all, is the essence of middle-period (and much other) Beethoven. Nothing was taken for granted in the slow movement either. Imbued with a strong sense of ‘lateness’, without sounding unduly rarefied, there was a rawness of passion here only matched by the music’s – and the performance’s – ultimate inscrutability. The extension of already powerful radicalism we heard in the scherzo, its trio writing still more so, offered ‘new discoveries’ aplenty. Familiarity can have us lose sight of what difficult music this is. Not here, however, nor in a finale that underlined both Beethoven’s status as Haydn’s pupil and how far he, how far music, had travelled in the meantime.