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Showing results for tags 'Beethoven'.
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Hi friends, The second week of concerts of my chamber music festival (the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival) got canceled this year when my friends Jimmy (clarinet) and Ian (pianist) came down with CoVID and my friend Ellen (violinist) came down with Shingles. So instead of rehearsing all day, my friend Charly (cello) and I (viola) went for scenic bicycle rides and went swimming in cold mountain rivers and tried to enjoy ourselves while our friends were suffering through pain, weakness, fever, etc... Honestly, it was a bit stressful despite having nothing to do but relax. One of the last beautiful afternoons we pulled out our instruments and did a little bit of reading. Beethoven wrote the Duo for Viola and Cello during his classical period for two nearsighted friends and titled it Duo with Two Eyeglasses Required. I'm pleased with the recording quality of the iPhone balanced on a music stand. Amazing how far technology has come. Anyways, please enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpIzg96SZjc
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In the vein of Paganini, Ernst, Ysaÿe... holy crap. Some of the close-up hand shots are priceless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW6N0BDAnN0
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Another winter, another late Beethoven string quartet. But other than being challenging, this experience was completely different from last year's. I flew out to California a couple days before the new year, saw the Sound exhibit at SFMoMA, walked around my old haunts, ate at a couple excellent restaurants, visited with friends, bought a new pair of loud dress socks, and, generally, enjoyed the still-beautiful-if-increasingly-uninhabitable-by-artists city. On New Year's Eve, my friend, the cellist Charly Akert (of the band, The Family Crest) drove us both up to Hyampom, the home of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival. Last winter, Trinity County was cold and wet. This year, Hyampom valley has had a dry few months. Warm, too. There was no snow on the river plain, the farmers are already worried about the upcoming summer's water supply, dependent on the winter's snowpack. But, snow or no, there is no more beautiful place to prepare chamber music. There is still no cell phone reception in Hyampom, California. Internet access is very limited. Heating is by the wood stove. The wood must be split. There isn't indoor plumbing (composting toilets, we sometimes refer to ourselves as the Poop-in-a-Bucket Chamber Music Festival). The food is all grown on the premises (except for the cream for our coffee and the coffee itself). It's quite an escape from modern life. There's little to do but take beautiful walks, make conversation, read, practice, and rehearse. While three members of our quartet have remained fairly constant over the past five years, we've rotated various friends of ours through the first violin position. This winter's first violinist was one of my favorite players, a guy named James Keene, a teacher and freelancer based in the northeast USA, he recently joined the violin section of the New Haven Symphony. James plays with a great deal of expression and invention, with style like violinists of three generations ago. It might be that I haven't played enough with him yet, but his ideas about sound, while I love the way he sounds, I have a hard time figuring out how I should sound when I play with him. It's an invigorating problem to face. Speaking of invigorating problems... Beethoven's string quartet, op. 130, is in 6 movements. The piece seems to be all angles and drama and weirdness. Consider the first movement: a slow, serious, chromatic opening leads to lush imitative counterpoint that foreshadows the movement's fast material. But, strangely, the fast material can't hold its own. It bursts forth only to be beaten back by the introductory material. Throughout the movement, at the beginning, middle, and end, the slow material and the fast material duke it out. It's a surprisingly enjoyable if but jarring experience. The second movement starts sneaky, but in the end, it's all about the first violin pyrotechnics. It's a 2-minute presto. Apparently, Beethoven liked to sit between the first and second violins of the premiering quartet to laugh maniacally every time the first violinist messed up. The third movement is an extraordinary andante, filigreed, lush, sylvan/pastoral--each voice is completely independent. I heard three different bird-calls in my part (the grace-note turns, the sextuplet trills, and the cuckoos near the end). But, like the first and second movements, Beethoven starts the movement as if it's going to be a much more serious, minor key movement. Is this the pattern that holds this massive work together? No, because the fourth movement starts simply and sweetly. The Alla danza tedesca is astonishingly lovely, but still, it simmers underneath. Take a look at the fussy, strangely pulsing dynamics: We reach the heart of the revised (more on that in a minute) string quartet at this point. The fifth movement is an adagio of unfulfilled love. Whenever Beethoven was asked about the movement, he came to tears. In fact, he couldn't even contemplate speaking about the music without choking up. It signified something intensely personal to him. And two thirds of the way through, as the accompaniment texture drops away into unified triplets, Beethoven asks the first violinist to play "Beklemmt" The Beklemmt solo is punctuated by silence (rests), as if the first violin, like Beethoven, can't quite sing out its song. After eight bars though, the sotto voce theme of the opening returns and leads us smoothly to the close. At this point, on the night of the premiere, the quiet calm of the fifth movement was broken by the clap of thunder that heralds the Große Fuge. The original ending is a massive double fugue. MASSIVE. THORNY. INSANE? Many in Beethoven's audience were fairly sure that the great man had finally lost it. He had pushed the boundaries of the genre, of functional harmony, of complicated counterpoint, too far! Of course, the fugue sounds complicated even (almost) two centuries later, but I don't think we, today, would make the same demand of Beethoven as did his friends, family, and publisher, that is, "Please compose us a new ending." The night of the premiere, Beethoven didn't attend, but waited nearby in a tavern. After the performance, his friends met him: BEETHOVEN: How'd it go? HOLZ: It went great, a triumph! BEETHOVEN: But how'd they like it? HOLZ: They asked for an encore of the second movement! BEETHOVEN: Of course they asked for an encore of the second movement, that's the fast exciting movement, and they probably wanted to see Schuppanzigh make a few more mistakes. HOLZ: Well, they asked for an encore of the fourth movement too! BEETHOVEN: Well, that's the pretty one, of course they wanted to hear that one again! What of the fugue? HOLZ: Hmm... Well... Umm... BEETHOVEN: ASSES! They're all asses! (other than the last line, reflected in the historical record, the dialogue is reconstructed) But while Beethoven never disavowed the fugue as the "proper" ending to op. 130, it only took Beethoven's publisher one day to convince the maestro to consider composing an alternative, less harrowing ending. The fugue was separated out, now listed as opus 133, and while Beethoven procrastinated until he was practically in his death bed, he did finally compose a new Finale. In fact, it was the last thing he ever composed. Emotionally and physically he was in bad condition, but this alternative ending shows none of that. It's bright and peppy and fun. Rather than beginning with an attaca thunderclap, the violist gets to sneak in, mischievously, just as the audience is exhaling from the adagio. And while the movement reflects some of the modernity of the rest of the quartet (especially on the last page), its general attitude completely recenters the work towards the first movement and the adagio. After studying the piece for months, rehearsing for weeks, and performing the work for different audiences, I still struggle to find a unifying idea in the music other than that Beethoven was attempting to see how far he could stretch the genre without using a unifying idea. Each movement is so different from the last--there are few ideas that carry through. If anything is constant though, it's Beethoven's well-developed sense of humor. All of this music (excepting the adagio) is written with a wink. Everything is a bit of an exaggeration of itself. The fussy dynamics are fussier than they need to be. The counterpoint is thicker and more intricate than it needs to be. The drama and the form are both extreme. I never tired of playing a single movement. There are endless opportunities for rehearsal and discussion. Beethoven, believe the hype.
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I've just had another interesting experience with the music festival I perform with, usually every summer. Last year, they started a winter late-Beethoven annual event, a late quartet and a late sonata. This year, op. 109 paired with op. 132. Hyampom, California is in Trinity County, mountainous and green with rivers and lakes. Their mountain range is rightly called the Trinity Alps. The co-founder of our festival has a small idyllic farm set just above a river plain. She raises chickens and ducks and rabbits and pigs and grows all her own vegetables. It's very impressive for someone whose training is in violin and physics and did not grow up a farmer. There is no cell phone service in Hyampom, and there is no internet in the farmhouse. When I'm there in the summer, I sleep out under the stars on the plain. I practice in the root cellar. Our concerts are in community centers, churches, and auditoriums for audiences who are offered the opportunity to attend for free, but fund the series every year (for the last 6 years) by their donations. All my previous experience was performing in large cities or outside of the country where I expected a different culture. I did not expect to find a ravenous, sophisticated audience in rural America, but they are there, and they have eaten up everything we've served to them. This last summer it was Bartok's String Quartet No. 3. They loved it! Now we're thinking about a Stravinsky/Schoenberg/Ravel program to see how far we can take it. Beethoven's String Quartet op. 132 is astonishing. The viola part is so challenging and so fun. The quartet is in an arch form, ABCBA. And though it is supposedly in a-minor, you spend most of the piece in other related major keys. The first and last movements are serious and profound, the first is a decimation, the last a summation and proclamation. The second movement is waltzy and folksy. The trio surrounds a viola solo with the two violins emulating bagpipes off in the distance. The fourth movement leads directly into the fifth, and is the strangest. It is in two parts, first, the quartet emulates a march performed by an inconsistent village band, then before the march is even finished, the first violin interrupts, playing a soprano delivering an agitated recitative. The third movement's extraordinary power (and length) is probably the reason that Beethoven introduces the last movement with the somewhat lighter march and recit. It is titled Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart. A Holy Song of Thanksgiving from a Convalescent to the Deity in the Lydian mode. Beethoven had been deathly ill, and upon recovering, his reaction was to write, perhaps, the greatest slow movement in the quartet literature. Like the quartet itself, this central movement is in five sections. I would call them A1-B-A2-B-A3. The A sections are gradually more rhythmically challenging chorales based on the same theme. The B sections are titled Neue Kraft fühlend "feeling new strength" and are a sprightly Andante in comparison to the chorales' Molto Adagio. Beethoven's use of the Lydian in the chorales is in contrast with D-major in the B sections. One instills a feeling of awe, the other, joy. In any case, the music was a pleasure and an honor to perform. You know what they say about Beethoven: Believe the hype. In the winter, Hyampom is quite different. It's still beautiful, but cold and wet, snowy and slushy; ample motivation to stay indoors and rehearse. There were times in our rehearsals when the rain turned into snow that it was impossible not to meditate on the terror of Beethoven's silence. And yet, he persevered. When he said he was composing music for another age, I have no doubt that he meant mine. Though I often enjoy music, it is seldom that it infects my heart. This was as close to an ecstatic experience as I've had in a while. In rehearsals, our cellist kept talking about the balance between making it happen and letting it happen to us. Beethoven gives quite a bit of information in the score; the music is quite good if you just follow his instructions. On the other hand, this is music that the performers should be feeling. And it's so intense! There are few moments of fortissimo, however he often uses piano, più piano, and pianissimo. Control and bravery are both required. After our third concert, before our fourth, we went to an old professor of mine for a coaching. Paul Hersh was just as I'd remembered him, brilliant and kind, overflowing with apropos quotes sourced from modern and classical poetry and literature. We only had a bit of time before he had a rehearsal, but he gave us several good ideas about how to achieve a more effective performance. Though he is still employed by my alma mater, he made reference, several times, to the "conservatory scam". It's hard to disagree with him. The deification and ossification of style and technique, the astronomical cost, the lack of job training for the modern musician-entrepreneur... The best thing that can be said about music school is that it is a great location for driven musicians to associate with one another. I am thankful that I was advised to attend a university for my undergraduate degree. Anyway, I am home now. Our final concert was a collaboration in San Francisco between our organization, The Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, and GroupMuse (perhaps the beginning of a new model for the performing arts economy? It deserves its own thread). It was remarkable how much less focused the audience was in San Francisco. Beethoven's energy was palpable in the smaller towns and villages. In the city, they are overwhelmed with stimuli. They have difficulty finding the stamina for Beethoven's alternating moments of stasis and focus. Back home in Gainesville, I sit with my dogs at my feet, a load of laundry is washing and I'm about to go practice a bit before lunch and teaching. I won't be back to Hyampom until July, but my Beethoven infection will hold me over until then.
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For any MNers in Paris or coming through at the time, I'd like to inform you about an upcoming concert on November 18th at 8PM: The INJS is in a beautiful setting next to the Luxembourg Gardens, and I'm thrilled to play with my illustrious colleague Bruno Pasquier. Another chance to see how my Buchstetter sounds next to his magnificent Maggini in the Mozart Divertimento and Beethoven Opus 9 No.3 feel free to PM me if you'd like more information.
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Sound quality is bad and not well aligned with the video, but it's still great.
