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Beethoven’s ultimate message
is that we are here to serve each
other and be connected and be
good people.
—Marin alsop
clearer in terms of tempo markings, from Beethoven to
nowadays—that was done, in many ways, between those two
people. So, of course, you have to try to get as close as possible
to Beethoven’s metronome markings. We cannot resurrect
precisely how it used to be … to know exactly how it sounded
200 years ago, we have no clue … but we can imagine. We also
have to adjust ourselves to the modern world. So there is this
bridge between the old metronome markings and old music in
a modern world and the perception of the modern audience,
the modern orchestra and musicians. The truth is somewhere
in between, I believe.”
“We have so much wonderful scholarship from the period
instrument movement,” observes Alsop, “and I work often with
the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London, another
thing I never expected in my career. I was kind of not much on
the sound of the period instruments and the whole movement
initially, but this is one of my favorite orchestras to work with
because you’re getting back to basics. You talk about phras-
ing and line and things we sometimes get away from in our
contemporary orchestras where you’re going for these different
levels of technical perfection. Somehow, when you go back
to the period instruments, that kind of technical perfection
is almost not achievable, so you start to speak about broader
trends and bigger ideas. And that’s a wonderfully authentic way
to approach music in general.
“What I like about the movement in terms of its approach
to the human side of Beethoven’s symphonies is the dance-like
quality, the flow, the lightness of being—those kinds of things.
These symphonies are so unique in that they can withstand
any kind of scrutiny, any kind of interpretation. Hopefully the
listeners at Ravinia will hear a wide range of approaches to
these different symphonies. Everyone conducting is very, very
different, and that’s exciting.
“For me, Beethoven is a way of life. My feelings about the
works change every time I do them, my approach has evolved,
I think, or certainly grown in different directions. The great
thing about great music is that there are many, many ways it
can be compelling. If I go to hear a Beethoven symphony with
a huge orchestra and the tempos are more staid and held back,
if it’s done with a conviction, it can come across. So for me, it’s
all about conviction, commitment. I tend to like a little more of
the early music approach now because I’ve been around that a
lot, but I don’t feel that it’s a mandate, either.
“Think about it: I’m doing the Ninth Symphony. How avant
garde can you get? Everybody thought, ‘God, what a dumb idea
to add the choir,’ at the time. And you think, wow, it is now
the
most popular piece in the world. That is saying something
a couple hundred years later! And the fact that Beethoven se-
lected a text that really represented, I think, his life philosophy
about connection and humanity and love. Beethoven’s ultimate
message is that we are here to serve each other and be connect-
ed and be good people.
“I think that’s why the Beethoven symphonies are so im-
portant to Ravinia this year, because of the focus on Leonard
Bernstein, who comes directly from that same philosophical
viewpoint.” Alsop was a protégé of Bernstein’s and is conduct-
ing several works of his throughout Ravinia’s season-long
Bernstein Centennial celebration, including his
Chichester
Psalms
as a prelude to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. “I think
as a composer the themes that Bernstein is always dealing
with, those existential questions, is a manifestation of him as a
human being: what questions did he want answered? It’s always
a question about what we can believe, what we can rely on.
Can we rely on the goodness of humankind? Beethoven is one
step earlier in really believing in unity and that possibility. So
I think Bernstein’s music, and he as a person too, was all about
this total embrace. It was a big hug.”
“In the Fifth Symphony,” adds Petrenko, “we have
a symphony of fate, one of the most famous four-note
themes in the beginning. This is a human who is so
forceful that he can withstand fate. He already knew
that his deafening was progressing, and that most
likely he would completely lose his hearing. For him
to overcome that and to overcome the fate of the his-
torical happenings around him—and bringing trombones into
the last movement, and combining polyphonic genres together
with big symphony finale genres, that was all relative novelty.
And, of course, the very first theme, nobody before was writing
a main theme which contained only four notes, all that with
his amazing skills of development, just developing the whole
movement, a whole world, that was very new for the time. He
always was moving the genre forward.
“The Fifth Symphony, of course, is one of the best-known
pieces and probably recognized by a vast majority of people
who have heard classical music at least once in their life. So for
me this gives a bit of pressure because you will be compared
with thousands of great interpreters [or even just one]. You
have to find your own way of interpretation that will be very
close to Beethoven—as close as I can—and also very convinc-
ing for everyone, for the orchestra and for the audience.”
“When we start the Ninth Symphony,” says Alsop, “maybe
I’m naive to still want the listener to think, ‘Wait. What’s going
on here? What’s happening?’ so that when we finally get to the
payoff moment in the finale, the listener is like, ‘Oh yeah! I to-
tally get it!’ That’s my job, to make those first three movements
leading to the payoff moment of the ‘Ode to Joy’ be a journey.
Not just a journey that the audience tolerates, but so that the
audience
feels
the journey.”
Award-winning veteran journalist, critic, columnist, broadcaster, author, and
educator Dennis Polkow’s most gratifying Beethoven experience was when, in an
interview with former CSO music director Sir Georg Solti, he asked the conductor
if he had ever tried Beethoven’s metronome markings. He never had; he thought
they were too fast and didn’t think they would work. “How do you know if you
never tried?” Solti did try, first with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. He loved it and
recorded the piece at the “new” tempo.
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