Tag Archives: Ludwig Van Beeethoven

Beethoven & Rachmaninoff: Breathtaking

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, Sunday, March 2 — Experiencing this performance took the audience into the world and the center of human life. Not magic, as someone might say, but the beauty and energy of real life swept us away. The music:  Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major, Opus 58, by Ludwig Van Beethoven; Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Opus 27, by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The beauty would make one tingle. Another note about the music is how much each composer knows about being alive.

Ludwig Van Beethoven, pianist and composer (1770 – 1827)

The soloist, Francesco Piemontesi, brought the music’s soul to Davies Hall. I have a recording of this Piano Concerto and listen to it frequently. A recording can never match being there and hearing the live music in person, but now I cannot imagine another pianist playing with the same understanding, delicacy, and power. Piemontesi demonstrated that a soft sound can be powerful. Robin Ticciati was the conductor. He and Piemontesi were on the same wave length with regard to both the feeling and technique. The orchestra performed well on all levels. The musicians were perfect partners in this strange and beautiful concerto. The piano sounded like water running smoothly over polished rocks. The key to this concerto is the very first note. The soloist begins. The pianist played that first note in a way that said, “This is what I am, what I will be, what you can feel. One note.” I felt it touched me, made my throat close, my eyes momentarily almost in tears. No reason why, except that Beethoven created a unique Piano Concerto that offers a journey through lush sounds in the quietest way he could. He let the Concerto tell us the message.

Francesco Piemontesi, pianist     The audience went appropriately wild after more bows. His encore was gorgeous.  J.S. Bach’s Chorale Prelude, Sleepers, Awake/Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme 645, transcribed for piano by Ferruccio Busoni, 1898. Piemontesi played the piece so that it sounded like he had two more hands. Some of that is thanks to Busoni, but it could only been played that way by a great pianist. Francesco Piemontesi is a great pianist.  These performances are his first at San Francisco.  This season, he will perform with the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic. He will perform with Robin Ticciati with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and tours with the London Philharmonic. And more.

Robin Ticciati, Conductor     has been music director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, since 2017. He is also the Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera since 2014. He has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and many more in Europe and the US. His San Francisco debut was January, 2023. I admired his conducting tremendously. His directions are clear and strong. His arms open high and wide to include the sound world, and he uses his natural grace, going into a grande plie or on his toes,  to signal where the music should go. I liked to see his movements as they confirm that music is something real that can move mountains and human hearts, too.

Sergei Rachmaninoff pianist and composer ( 1873 – 1943)

The Symphony No.2 in E minor, Opus 27 is so beautiful that the self-appointed Modernists could not admit it is great music, but it is. They called it new or semi or whatever before Romantic. Rachmaninoff’s music is original. He has his own voice and style; expansively it includes the fullest experience and ideas. It is sensual and magnificent. When the first movement began, I thought, “Oh, he is taking us into a mystery.” Later, I read that Michael Steinberg commented that it begins “in mystery, with pianissimo low strings.” The Symphony No. 2 is about 55 minutes long. It has to be big to be so full of all its love and life. The composer leads us through the Symphony’s world. The first movement is marked Largo-Allegro moderato, and it covers slow and rhythmic, melodies in motion. The second movement, Allegro molto, is wilder. There are tunes that Rachmaninoff, also a composer of songs, flies through. There is a fugue in the second violins and then a scherzo-like drama that Rachmaninoff lets loose. Steinberg knew that the composer liked to enter notes of the Dies irae from the Gregorian Mass for the Dead. But that is not the idea of the Adagio that comes next. It is about love. “Now hear this;” The music tells the story of love; it does not need to speak. There is still more mystery in the next movement. Each instrument plays: English horn and oboe and then each of the others. The clarinet returns to the melody at the beginning. Having begun the Finale with the Symphony’s quiet, now it turns on the music rushing like a water fall. Rachmaninoff ‘s lyricism thrills the ending with wide world embraces.

SF Symphony Premieres of Music & Artists

May 11, 2023, San Francisco Symphony, Davies Hall: It was a great night for the music. There were thrilling debut performances of music and by the artists. Violinist Hilary Hahn was scheduled to perform Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 77 with the SFS. Illness made it necessary to cancel. What could take the place of Brahms and Hahn? The fully packed audience learned the answer: pianist Bruce Liu, a great pianist who gave us Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. #3 in C minor, Opus 37 (1800). This was Mr. Liu’s debut performance with the SFS; he was the complete artist for Beethoven. The program opened with Darker America (1925) by William Grant Still. It was the SFS’s first performance of this classic music which combines music, history, and emotion. One can hear the composer’s thoughts. Closing the event was Ein Heldenleben, Opus 40 (1898) by Richard Strauss. Strauss is best known for his operas; this piece for orchestra presents the drama that propels his operas. The conductor, Rafael Payare also made his debut with the SFS. He is in his fourth season as music director of the San Diego Symphony and his first season as music director of the Montreal Symphony. He has conducted major European orchestras Including the Vienna Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, London Orchestra, and more.

Rafael Payare, conductor   Music Director, Montreal

Maestro Payare shares his electric presence with the orchestra and audience. His gestures are clear and his physical movement expresses the rhythm, shape, and character of the music. He is exciting to watch and more than that he reaches into the orchestra players’ musical beings. Their music is alive with energy in response to him, making a thrilling concert.

William Grant Still, conductor (1895-1978). Photograph by Carl Van Vechten (1949).

Composer William Grant Still created prolific and varied works: 5 symphonies, 4 ballets, 9 operas, more than 30 choral works, chamber music, art songs, and pieces for solo instruments. His work was successful and embraced by music institutions. He was the first African-American composer to have an opera, Troubled Island, produced (1949) by the New York City Opera and the first to be produced by a major opera company. His first symphony, Afro-American Symphony (premiered in 1931) was the first performance by a major American symphony orchestra of a work by an African-American composer. His career was one of many “firsts,” and his work surely deserved the recognition. He was also the first African-American to conduct major American symphonies, the Hollywood Bowl and the Rochester Philharmonic. He studied with George Chadwick who encouraged him to create music out of an authentic American voice. He also studied with Edgard Varese, the avant-garde French composer. Still was grateful for his time with Varese although he did not follow his avant-garde way. He dedicated Darker America to Varese. Still wrote a program note describing the changing emotions of this tone poem. It depicts the “American Negro. His serious side is presented and is intended to suggest the triumph of a people over their sorrows …”  There are three themes: sorrow, hope, and a “theme of the American Negro.” The music suggests their hardships. The English horn begins the sorrow theme; hope is found in the “muted brass accompanied by strings and woodwinds.” The music does not promise a happy ending. Sorrow and hope lead the people to overcome their struggle. The themes join in the ending notes, more subdued than joyful. Although only 13 minutes long, this piece is musically refined, powerful, and moving. One hopes that SFS’s performance will begin a revival of this piece in other major halls.

Ludwig Van Beethoven, composer (1770-1827)

In his early career, Beethoven often performed piano concerts, includeding improvised music. His partnership with the piano meant that many of the pieces could not be performed by anyone else. It was also true that his piano music was too difficult for lesser beings. His realization of his progressive deafness led him to withdraw from his appearances. He could no longer do the piano parts he composed or sail through improvisations, creating as he played. The Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Opus 37 was probably written in 1800, and premiered in 1803. For music specialists, Beethoven’s work is divided into three eras. This Concerto sits on the fence between the first and middle eras. It maintains the purity of Mozart’s and Hayden’s classical style, but Beethoven’s energy and grand heart, convinces the Concerto to jump off the fence. As played by Bruce Liu, its invention and demand for a pianist of Beethoven-quality let us hear the greatness of the composer.

 

Bruce Liu, Pianist      Bruce Liu after winning the 18th International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland, 2021.

There was not a moment of the Concerto in which the listener could relax. This is not a warm bath of music. There are sudden changes of key and from soft to loud. The audience was literally on the edges of their seats, ears up, eyes open. Mr. Liu’s style is restrained, no wild arms flaring around; he sat quietly and opened worlds with power and finesse. The music pulses with feeling that makes it different from the earlier Beethoven and classical predecessors. Beethoven pushes humanity forward. His music demonstrates what humans could be and could do. Davies Symphony Hall seemed to levitate when the music ended. No one wanted it to end. After several curtain calls, we were surprised to see Mr. Liu sit down to play Liszt’s etude, La Campanella, which is based on a virtuoso violin piece by Paganini. Wishing Ms Hahn a speedy recovery, he said, “This is one for the violin lovers.” It is intricate, fast, and faster, making circles within circles of music like concentric roller coasters.

Richard Strauss, composer, conductor (1864-1949) Painting by Max Liebermann, 1918, below

Ein Heldenleben, Opus 40, by Richard Strauss, is called a tone poem as is Darker America. It is operatic in the sweep of the story of a Hero’s Life. It is the composer’s own story made into music. In a note to himself, Strauss wrote, “–the man is visible in the work.” The on-going debate over a program, story, or theme in serious music (and painting, dance, writing) was on his mind, and he went ahead with his own sort of program. There are dramatic episodes; it opens with a lush, passionate, bold depiction of The Hero. The music changes radically to abrasive, “cutting,” “hissing,” sounds; those words are written on the score. It is Strauss giving the critics and critical public a large and nasty presence in this music. SFS’s Concertmaster, Alexander Barantschik, played the violin solo majestically. His solo work was devoted to the part describing The Hero’s True Love. Strauss wrote to the novelist Romain Rolland that his wife, Pauline, was “very complicated … tres femme, a little perverse, a bit of a coquette, never the same twice.” The Hero and his True Love are playful, they follow each other and then stay away. In The Hero’s Works of Peace, The Hero goes to battle but also to make peace. The closing section is The Hero’s Escape from the World and Completion; his battles are over and the music becomes tranquil. One of Strauss’s friends protested the quiet ending. The composer changed it to something completely different, loud, profound, and fitting for the mysterious character of The Hero. Ein Heldenleben was more exciting than an action hero’s movie. Its rich, gorgeous music was even fun to hear.