The Philadelphia Orchestra performs an ‘extreme’ Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’ and a calmer Florence Price
‘Beethoven should not feel safe, but this was dangerous — and subtly disturbing’
‘Tis the season of the 9th symphonies. It’s occuring at all levels of the classical music world.
The Berlin Philharmonic is winding up its spring with Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. Early music groups that don’t venture much beyond Bach, stretch themselves with the Schubert Symphony No. 9. Philadelphia Orchestra has — at least this season — the Beethoven Symphony No. 9, intriguingly programmed with Florence Price, whose music appeared a century later and an ocean apart. Why not?
Tried, true, never out of fashion but presenting challenges that never go away, the B9 (as it’s abbreviated) was a un-gentle reminder that Beethoven was one of history’s most extreme artists. And nobody at the full Marian Anderson Hall on Friday was likely to take the piece for granted in the extreme performance led by music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
With a speed that suggests Beethoven’s fist-shaking impatience with the outside world, the performance was rhythmically emphatic, harmonically pungent, and dynamically explosive; not just with loudness, but making softness speak louder.
Some moments went way over the top amid the first three instrumental movements that alternately rebel, catastrophize, gallop triumphantly, and search deep within. In much of the brisk second movement, some of the orchestra members were a nano-second away from falling out of the tempo. Beethoven may have been after something like that with his fast metronome markings.
Beethoven should not feel safe, but this was dangerous — and subtly disturbing. The slower third movement greatly benefitted from Nézet-Séguin’s ability to phrase a melody as though it has profound, unsung words.
Some scholars claim the out-of-character choral finale betrays the mastery of the first three instrumental movements. Yet it’s a major reason why B9 is so loved with a message of universal brotherhood that needs to be proclaimed more loudly than ever.
And loud it was — in ways that would have overloaded the Carnegie Hall acoustic but emerged with forceful clarity here. Few vocal soloists are able to give their best with Beethoven’s dense, unsympathetic way with the voice. All four soloists — Rihab Chaieb, Issachah Savage, Ryan McKinny and especially Leah Hawkins — are singers I’d love to hear again but not in Beethoven.
Yet, along with the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir, they were part of the final movement’s overall might, in which even inaccurately sustained high notes were part of the sense of mortal humans reaching for a higher ideal.
Luckily, Florence Price, represented by her Piano Concerto in One Movement on the first half, didn’t have to follow Beethoven’s decibel level. The 1934 concerto (which actually has three movements) had Lara Downes as soloist, who gave the imposing piano writing the heat of Liszt while maintaining the specific personality of Price.
Written soon after Price’s Symphony No. 1, the Concerto is more personal and less inclined toward the classical manner of 1930s America; the first movement is marked by lyricism with distinctively underlying melancholy that gives the music multiple levels of meaning.
Some have talked about the spirituality of the second movement; I hear it as her own personal hymn, not for church but for her hours of need. Purely on a compositional level, the music builds masterfully and irresistibly. The final Juba movement is fun but in ways that don’t seem as jokey as similar movements in her output.
How does it sit in a program next to humor-free Beethoven? It sits just fine when an intermission separates the music. And Downes ended that half of the concert with a solemn, moving solo-pianist version of the spiritual “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”
The Philadelphia Orchestra program will be repeated. May 24 and 29, 7:30 p.m at Marian Anderson Hall, Kimmel Center. philorch.ensembleartsphilly.org