When
the Kapsberger could not come, the society found a replacement in a pair
of musicians calling themselves (with a supreme lack of public relations
pizzazz) "The Fortepiano-Cello Duo," in a program of which three out of the
four works were by Beethoven. The fourth was a Bach Suite for solo
cello, which certainly belongs in the generally accepted category
of "early music." But Beethoven?
Bach was born in 1685 and died in 1750. He was the
culmination — and greatest composer— of the Baroque style, which, for all
its current popularity, is still considered somehow other when orchestras,
soloists, and chamber groups prepare their programs. Except for an occasional
taste of the Brandenburg Concertos, The Four Seasons, or a Bach Partita,
Baroque music is generally left to specialists. (This is even more exclusively
so in regard to medieval and Renaissance music.)
Beethoven, on the other hand, was born 20 years after Bach's death. He was
9 years old at the time of the American Revolution and 19 at the time of
the French Revolution. He himself was a revolution. When he died, in 1827,
serious music had been decisively and irrevocably transformed. Beethoven's
compositions lie at the heart of standard concert programming. All the most
eminent musicians play them constantly. If Beethoven can be considered "early
music," than anything can be considered early music, and the category is
meaningless.
On the other hand... (and how fortunate it is that our species is bilaterally
symmetrical, so that we have this expression and can use it to qualify every
dogmatic assertion)... on the other hand, there is the matter of historical
instrumentation and styles of performance, a subject that has been totally
appropriated as its own by the early-music movement. Beginning with shawms
and sackbuts, and proceeding with lutes, violones, and Arp Schnitger organs,
the exponents of period performance practices have gradually moved upward
through the late 18th Century, on through the Classical period, and well
into the late 19th Century. There are now performances of the Brahms
symphonies (!) on period instruments, performances which sound distinctly
different from those played by the traditional "modern" orchestra
As to Beethoven, he too has been extensively early-musicked. You can
get CDs of his symphonies executed by orchestras of the precise size, instrumentation,
balance, articulation, and stylistic traits that his original audiences would
have encountered. This has constituted a new Beethoven revolution — and what
may at first have sounded like pedantic eccentricity has by now revealed
the composer in a radically new light. Listen to John Eliot Gardiner's electrifying
recordings of the Beethoven symphonies — or, at an even greater extreme,
Christopher Hogwood's — and you will know what I mean.
The same thing has happened to some of the composer's chamber music — which
brings us to the Fortepiano-Cello Duo. In their performances of Beethoven
at St. James by-the-Sea, Eric Zivian played not the modern grand piano but
a reproduction of a fortepiano from Beethoven's period, and Tanya Tomkins's
cello was strung with gut strings, held between the knees (instead of being
propped by a post resting on the floor), fingered with much less continuous
vibrato than is customary in modem cello playing, and bowed with lighter
pressure. These were, in fact, the instruments and playing styles Beethoven's
compositions presupposed — and while no one is going to renounce Sviatoslav
Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich in this repertoire, there can be no doubt
that performances on instruments of Beethoven's period bring out certain
fundamental qualities of the music that one misses (without knowing that
one is missing them) in performances growing out of later traditions. The
structure does not change, the emotional content does not change, but the
colors are different, and the textures, and the balance — in ways that profoundly
change a listener's perceptions of the same score.
Of course, gut strings and light soundboards are not enough in themselves
to make for an exciting and moving performance of Beethoven or anyone else.
One also needs imaginative musicians — musicians who not only understand
Beethoven's music, but who know how to intensify its values on the particular
instruments being employed. Fortunately, both Zivian and Tomkins turned out
to be musicians of this sort — and then some! One might take as a typical
example of what they gave the audience Zivian's performance of Beethoven's
Seven Bagatelles, Opus 33.
It was remarkable how much more pungent and quirky this highly advanced music
sounded on the fortepiano, with its delicacy of tone, its harpsichord-like
timbres in the lower octaves, and the general resemblance of its sonorities
to an old honky-tonk piano at a curiously high degree of refinement. This
instrument is undoubtedly an ancestor of the modern piano, but it would be
a mistake to think of it as somehow primitive, defective, inadequate, a mere
stage on the road to something better. For its time, it was a state-of-the-art
instrument, and the reproductions we get to hear these days are exquisite
examples of the piano-builder's craft. Rachmaninoff's Preludes would not
suit it (unless you are really into kinky), but for early Classical music
its sounds are treasurable in their own right. The more experience one has
of listening to the fortepiano, the more one comes to love it.
There is now abundant access to the instrument on CDs. Three complete (or
almost complete) recordings of the Mozart piano concertos exist (by Malcolm
Bilson, Jos van Immerseel, and Robert Levin), and all three are splendid.
Ronald Brautigam has recorded all the Mozart sonatas and variations, and
there is a superb CD of Mozart sonatas by Christopher Kite. Haydn, too, has
benefited from the fortepiano revival, with a brilliant series of recordings
by Andreas Staier. As for Beethoven, Levin has recorded all the concertos
plus the Choral Fantasy (what a revelation that is), and — surprisingly —
even Andras Schiff has ventured into this "early" territory, with a glorious
recording of the later Bagatelles and other short solo works, played on Beethoven's
own Broadwood. All that remains is for a gutsy fortepianist to attempt all
the Beethoven sonatas (although the "Hammerklavier" is a bit hard to imagine
on the Hammerflügel!)
Local opportunities to hear the fortepiano have been rare: the only one 1
can remember was a recital by Steven Lubin at the Athenaeum, which was disappointing
musically. Some listeners might have had reservations about Eric Zivian too,
not because of any failure on the part of this young musician to master the
instrument (quite the contrary), but because of his style. He is an extremely
mannered musician. Tempos were in constant flux. Contrasts were extreme.
Dramatic points were outrageously underlined. Breath-pauses punctuated the
musical flow. Virtuosic fast sections were wild to the point of inebriation.
Changes of pace or direction were abrupt. The music careened, zigzagged,
exploded, and disintegrated like Roman candles. Such dizziness! Such gall!
I loved it. These are, after all, bagatelles. Quirkiness is their essence.
Zivian seemed born to play such music. .In comparison, the zestful and thoroughly
idiomatic modern piano performances by Stephen Kovacevich or Alfred Brendel
(even the young, uninhibited Brendel) sound stodgy and uptight. There was
a similar freedom in the Duo's performance of Beethoven's
cello-and-piano Variations on "Bei Männern" from The Magic Flute, where
all the inventiveness and whimsy of this exuberant tribute to Mozart seemed
magnified and energized by the performers' temperaments. They were a bit
more sober in the G Minor Sonata, Opus 5, No. 2, for their interpretive fancy
expanded or receded in sensitive response to the music's inherent character,
and the G Minor Sonata covers a wide range of musical thought and expression.
Nevertheless, their captivating performance was significantly more vivid
and stimulating than what has been the standard model for early-instrument
performances of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas: the wonderful recording by van
Immerseel and Anner Bylsma.
Tanya Tomkins was a student of Bylsma, the path-breaking exponent of
the early cello, and — above all when left to herself, as in her performance
of the Bach C Major Solo Cello Suite — she sounds very much like him. Her
Bach (added to this "Mostly Beethoven" program, she told the audience, because
the concert took place a day after Bach's birthday) was strong and supple,
but without eccentricities. It had none of the bizarre — and, when not bemusing,
intriguing — interpretive liberties that have characterized Peter Wispelweys
period instrument performances of the Bach Suites (such as the one he gave
for the SDEMS in 1996). Her technical command of the instrument was "impressive,
without calling attention to itself: the focus, for both player and listener,
was on the music, which Tomkins expounded with lucid intelligence, powerful
feeling, and lively rhythmic drive.
Here, as throughout this exceptional concert, the issue of "early music"
or "early instruments" became moot. What one heard was first-rate music-making,
enhanced but not consumed by the early instruments and the canny stylistic
awareness that went with them.
|
