New York Philharmonic – David Zinman, conductor; Alisa Weilerstein, cello. March 9, 2012.

NJPAC, Newark, NJ, Tier 1 (Seat D5, $60.)

Program

Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 (1811-12) by Beethoven (1770-1827).

Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra, Op. 22 (1945) by Barber (1910-81).

Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 (1806) by Beethoven.

This concert is the second in the “Modern Beethoven” series conducted by David Zinman.  As I wrote in the last blog, we couldn’t attend the ones scheduled for Avery Fisher Hall, so we bought tickets to this NJPAC performance instead.

Both the 8^th and the 4^th belong to the “not as frequently played” Beethoven symphonies.  Not that it is any indication of their popularity, but I do not have either of them in my iPod; which I intend to remedy in the near future.  Neither am I that familiar with either of them, except for the first movement of the 8^th.

Interestingly, what the Program Notes say about the even-numbered symphonies (that they are considered reflective and conservative) is truer of these two symphonies than the one (No. 2) we heard last week.  They both have a Mozartian (or Hadynesque, since Beethoven is a student of Haydn) feel to them.  The Eighth is very compact at about 25 minutes, and instead of a slow second movement and a scherzo-minuet third movement we have an “Allegretto scherzando” as the second movement and a “Tempo di Menuetto” as the third.  It may seem Beethoven did away with the traditional format and expanded the Scherzo-Minuet into two movements.  So much for playing a musicologist, but this is not mentioned in the Program Notes.  The Notes does say, however, that Berlioz (as a music critic) was quite baffled by how different keys popped up during the last movement.  For the record, the first and fourth movements are Allegro vivace e con brio and Allegro vivace – notice there is a “con brio.”

This symphony was premiered together with the sixth and seventh, which are tremendously popular today.  I can imagine how an audience would compare the three when they are played in rapid succession like that.  Also, these symphonies no doubt broke new grounds for their time, so I wonder if the listeners got a bit of Beethoven-fatique as well.

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot to say about the fourth as a composition either.  It is a bit longer at an advertised 32 minutes, and consists of the movements Adagio – Allegro vivace, Adagio, Allegro vivace, Allegro ma non troppo; thus notable for a lack of “con brio.”  Yet there are enough lively passages in it.  The unfortunate thing about this symphony is that it is sandwiched between the brilliant and heroic third and fifth symphonies, which for many are more representative of the Beethoven of great contrasts.

The symphony was commissioned by Count Franz von Oppersdorf, and most people believe Beethoven already had the work completed when he received the commission.  On the nyphil.org website we read that the premiere was played using someone else’s orchestra, a faux pax that would not be forgiven by the Count, and as a consequence Beethoven never got another commission from him.

Beethoven was already beginning to go deaf when this work was composed.  He would go on to write another five symphonies (although the fifth had already been started at this time.)

A couple of interesting observations about the orchestra.  For both Beethoven symphonies the size was much reduced.  (E.g., 12 first violins, 8 violas.)  Both call for two horns, yet we saw a third one in the section.  And the timpanist was constantly tuning the drums.

We saw Alisa Weilerstein about a year ago (April 2011).  I can still hum the four-note motif from the Shostakovich concerto, a tribute to how memorable the performance was (or at least the choice of music.)  Meanwhile she has piled on a few more accomplishments, including winning the MacArthur prize.

Despite the glowing write-up in the Program Notes, I didn’t find this performance as captivating as the last one.  Not that there was anything wrong with tonight’s performance.  At a minimum, the music calls for great virtuosity from the musician, and Weilerstein made it sound exquisite and effortless.  Much of the piece seemed to be played on the highest registers of the cello, and you would have the cellist reaching down to the bottom of the fingerboard, and the sound was rich and not the least bit strained at all.  The balance between the cello and the orchestra was also good, at no time was the soloist overwhelmed by the orchestra.

Barber wrote this as a result of a commission by Serge Koussevitzky of the Boston Symphony.  The conductor had Raya Garbousova in mind as the soloist.  Barber would first sit through a few hours of the soloist’s playing highlights from her repertoire to get an idea of her qualities, and he would get a lot of feedback from her during the course of the composition.

Before we went to the concert I read up the write-ups on New York Philharmonic’s website, including the PDF files that would be included in the Avery Fisher Hall program.  The Program Notes for NJPAC is different, necessarily so because they are putting on only one of the three concerts.  Nonetheless, what we read in the NJPAC notes is quite different from the Avery Fisher Hall notes, and a bit disjoint at that.  Also, I wonder what got into the Annotator Keller that he would use big words and terms like adumbration, perspicacious, and Apollonian & Dionysian in the Notes from these last two weeks.

This is the second time I went to NJPAC, which is a bit difficult to explain since it is quite a bit closer to us than Lincoln Center, and they do put out reasonably attractive programs.  For example, in mid April they will have Joshua Bell and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.  Regardless, the concert hall is kind of circular in shape, with spacious and comfortable seats.  But the acoustics leaves a lot to be desired.  I had a lot of trouble with the cellos, they just didn’t come through.  Strangely, the solo cello was okay.  The hall seats about 2500 people, but even with the four tier blocked off, the remaining sections were about 80% full.

In the Notes there is an admonition to the audience they should not applaud in between movements.  Since I don’t see the same notice in the Avery Fisher Hall programs, I feel it is a slight slap in the face of the Newark audience.  In any case, there was no reason to worry about this: the applause was so tepid that I felt obliged to clap loudly so as to give the artists some moral support.

The New York Times reviewer saw the Avery Fisher Hall performance, naturally.