Orchestral Imbalance: The SPCO's Beethoven

Just a word of caution, I have no formal musical training or knowledge.  I just love music.  Writing about music will be a challenge for me.  I am going to be seeing near twenty concerts over the next year, so hopefully my knowledge and ability to write about music improves over the next year.

September 9th I had the chance to see the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) perform Beethoven's third symphony, "Eroica".  For this show, the SPCO was under the baton of artistic partner Edo de Waart.  Though ultimately it was a fine performance, it had a few problems that I couldn't over look. 

The orchestra felt unbalanced in that the string section over powered all else.  The strings played very well, which lead to some beautiful and exciting moments, especially in the 2nd and 4th movements, but it also meant that the melody was lost more than a few times in a sea of screeching strings.  This is never more apparent than in the main theme from the first movement.  The brass carries the melody, but, even being familiar with this work, I had trouble picking it out, looking for it as I was.

The percussion section was also fairly anemic.  The symphony didn't carry the weight it needed to be a truly great performance.  Bass is something to be felt as well as heard, and there was nary a vibration in my seat, and I wasn't even that far from stage.  Of course, I told myself, the real problem here is that this is not a symphony orchestra but a chamber orchestra, which is considerable smaller.  A work with the size and grandeur of Beethoven's Third (the SPCO's own website calls it one of the grandest statements in symphonic literature) really needs a larger orchestra.  The smaller size of the SPCO just wasn't up to the task of bring the needed thunder.  Still, it was a decent performance, but the moments of beauty were offset by the afore mentioned flaws (I never regret seeing live music, however), and I told myself that the performance I was to be seeing on October 4th of Beethoven's Seventh symphony would be a better match for the SPCO, as the Seventh is more fleet of foot than Eroica (Richard Wagner famously called Beethoven's Seventh symphony the "apotheosis of dance").  It also happens to be my favorite of Beethoven's symphonies.

 (I also heard Stravinsky's Octet for Winds on the 3rd, but due to having trouble finding parking and running most of the way to the concert hall, I was sweaty, panting and not a very good audience member, so I can't really talk about that performance).



(the highlight of the Sept concert occurs at 42:20)

So, October 4th rolls around, and for this performance, the SPCO is under the direction of the Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard.  I have a collection of his recordings of Carl Nielsen's orchestral music, and it is fantastic, so I was looking forward to his first guest conducting spot with the SPCO.

I'm not even sure how to talk about what I heard this night.  Was this a better performance than the Third?  Oh Judas Rockin' Priest, yes!  Yes, but not in quite the way I expected.  I have never heard the SPCO rock the pillars of heaven like they did this night.  The timpani shook the balcony, the brass was majestic, the winds were beautiful, and the strings were fantastic and balanced perfectly with the rest of the orchestra.  And they sounded HUGE!  If I had closed my eyes and been asked the size of the orchestra I was listening to, I would have said it was a full sized Symphony orchestra, at least.

I am going to be honest.  I have always considered the SPCO to be slightly inferior to the Minnesota Orchestra.  This performance has made me rethink such an assessment.  The SPCO played flawlessly!  I know this symphony rather well, and I would have picked up on any glaring flaws, but there were none to be found.  Of course, on the other hand, I might have been so swept up in the beauty and energy of the performance that I was blinded to the flaws (I wasn't, but it was that good).

The first movement of Beethoven's seventh is one of his most joyous compositions, and it was all I could do to leap up in dance as the orchestra played.  The second movement is maybe the most hauntingly beautiful (or is it beautifully haunting) thing Beethoven ever wrote, and the SPCO brought every bit of beauty out of the score.  The third movement is a clever melody, written in such a way that it could repeat endlessly, constantly looping back in on itself (as well as I know the symphony, I actually forgot where the movement ends).  I have always considered this the weakest movement of the symphony, and here, Dausgaard and the SPCO take it at a brisker tempo than it is usually performed in.  I liked the tempo, but it did give me one concern.  If the pace of the third movement is too similar to that of the finale, it might lessen its impact.  The finale is a big, exciting affair, and if the jump in the energy isn't immediately obvious, the ending could fizzle.  That didn't end up being the problem, however, as Dausgaard took the finale, again, at a tempo faster than I had heard before.  The problem was he took it too fast.  Some of the excitement got last in the faster pace.  You didn't get swept up in the music the way you might of with just a slightly slower tempo.  Whatever my misgivings about the pace, the SPCO gave Dausgaard everything he asked for, and no fault could be found with how they played.  And in truth, a slightly too fast tempo does nothing to diminish the awesomeness of this performance.  A high water mark for the SPCO.

Osmo Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra: Beethoven's Seventh

Now, I didn't want to blame De Waart solely for the noticeable weaker Beethoven performance.  There could be other factors.  Maybe it was the different venue, or perhaps where I was sitting.  I found two things online, however, that cleared things up for me.  I read an interview with De Waart in the local paper (the Star Tribune, I believe) where he said he was used to having a string section twice as large when performing Beethoven's Third.  He sounded like a bird who had gotten his wing clipped and then expected to fly.  The second thing was a review on classicstoday.com on a recording the Dausgaard made with his Swedish Chamber Orchestra (ironically, it was a recording of Beethoven's Third).  The reviewed mentioned how, by taking a chamber orchestra and having them play all out, it gave the music a bigger sound than most symphony orchestras have.  That's what I heard, as well.  The SPCO playing like their lives depended on it.  So, in fact, the conductor was the difference.  Where De Waart's performance of Beethoven's Third was just another subscription night at the local orchestra, Beethoven's Seventh was something special.  It had a conductor with a vision of how the music should be played, and the talent to make it happen.  And when that conductor is backed by an orchestra with the right talent... magic!

As Thomas Dausgaard makes decisions on where he will make guest conducting appearances, I hope the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra becomes a regular stop.  Those will be shows not to miss.

 (sad postscript to the story, both the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra are having troubles negotiating contracts with their musicians, as both orchestras are currently locked out.  Beethoven's Seventh might