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.