The program started with a documentary about recording the entire Beethoven symphony cycle, then, after an intermission (“interval” in Euro-speak), performances of Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh. This was more of an infomercial for the Berlin Philharmonic than an objective documentary, but did provide some insights into the orchestra and its surprisingly compatible relationship with the wild-haired conductor from Liverpool.
Rattle's reading of the Fourth was bigger and badder than it deserves to be, still first-rate. But the Seventh was appropriately right on the cusp of frenzy. Decades ago, who would have dreamed that the BP would become a league of head-bangers, but I’m not complaining. There was non-stop physical action for the eye and, for the ear, the “apotheosis of the dance,” as Wagner called it, has never been more bacchanalian. I wanted to stand up and cheer, but that’s not the sort of things you do in a movie theater with only 25 other guests present. (I wonder whether video concerts in Europe are similarly under-attended. The theater in question is located just eight miles from Princeton, known for its plethora of classical music lovers.)
The infomentary, to coin a term for this painlessly edifying marketing tool, contained a few memorable bon mots by the maestro. Early on, the affable Rattle tells the interviewer that one of the great dangers of interpreting Beethoven is making his music too elegant and polished, that it always needs a bit of roughness to let Beethoven speak. He called conducting his music “looking at yourself through an uncomfortable mirror. He asks of you more than you can give,” which is why Rattle said he appreciates the “superhuman energy” of the BP.
Rattle then sat at the keyboard to show how Beethoven was doing things in his own way right from the start with the First Symphony. Rattle stated what the 18th century audience’s expectation would have been at the opening, then proceeded to shatter those expectations no less than seven times in a few minutes. (I may be a little off on the numbers, but you know what I mean.) Beethoven still follows the models of his teachers, Rattle says, but in the last movement, it’s “Haydn and Mozart go to the gym.”
Skipping past the Second, Rattle spends some time explicating the Third. Beethoven not only was the first composer to put politics into a symphony, he said (even if deep down it is really about a personal crisis), but it’s also almost as though he is composing himself out of suicide. (Well put!)
Rattle described the room where the Eroica was first performed in Vienna, not much larger than the BP’s stage. "It must have been like hearing Vesuvius erupt,” he said breathlessly.
Other words of note pertained to the Sixth, the Pastoral, to which he ascribed the theme, Fragility. “That storm…it’s actually terror, psychic terror,” he said, and then the camera cut to a bit of the performance, much more over the top than what we are used to hearing. “It makes the final thanksgiving that much more affecting,” he said. “It is a thanksgiving that all of us have survived.”
There was a very interesting bit of dialogue about an instrumental part of the last movement of the Ninth. One of the scholars following one of the earliest extent copies of the score discovered something truly remarkable and brought it to Rattle's attention.
There is a point where there are a series of F#s repeated up and down in octave, followed by three rising notes in the French horns (B major, then B minor? I’m writing this from memory). This is repeated two more times. It turns out that the original score calls for the French horns notes to be different, not an exact repeat, in fact, to falter in the second and third repeat, before the glorious reentry of the chorus.
The effect is a little like that staggering, stuttering conclusion to the second movement of the Eroica, a sign of helplessness and despair. However, in the Ninth, it is swept away by the most famous chorus in all music.
This production is related to the BP’s Digital Concert Hall https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/ sponsored by Deutsche Bank. If you see any more programs like this in a movie theater near you, seize the moment!
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