The Scottish Chamber Orchestra
The Usher Hall
Beethoven’s Symphony No 6 in F Major and Symphony No 7 in A Major
2020 is a very important year for music lovers. It is the 250 th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, and there is no doubt that there will be very many concerts of his music programmed for this year. I myself will be travelling to Northampton at the end of March to sing in a rare performance of his magisterial, and phenomenally difficult, Missa Solemnis. This was a welcome chance to hear two of his most beloved symphonies, played by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev, in the Usher Hall.
We often now think of Beethoven as a fiery troubled genius, beset by financial worries and cursed by bad health and deafness. In his Heiligenstadt Testament, written in 1802, he poured out his soul to his brothers about the terrifying onset of deafness, which would render him totally deaf by 1816, an unbelievably awful thought for a composer. He was by all accounts a difficult man to deal with and continually fell out with his friends, relatives and supporters. And yet, he was loved by his contemporaries and revered by the public, a reverence that has lasted to this day. That this curmudgeonly character, usually portrayed in paintings as grimly serious, could produce music of such sublimity and transcendental beauty is one of the great paradoxes of art.
The 6th Symphony, the Pastoral, was premiered in one of the most extraordinary concerts in history, on December 22nd 1808. Four hours in length, from 6.30 to 10.30, in a cold and draughty Theater an der Wien in Vienna, it included the premieres of the 6th and the 5th Symphonies as well as the 4th Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy, and two movements of the Mass in C and the concert aria “Ah perfido”. It seems scarcely credible now. Imagine being there to hear those works for the first time!
Beethoven loved to stroll in the hills and woods to the north of Vienna, from his house in the leafy suburb of Heiligenstadt, surrounded by vineyards. The 6th is explicitly programmatic in its celebration of rural life, with happy countryfolk, birdsong and weather effects, from a wild thunderstorm to the reviving rays of sunshine in the aftermath of the storm. Modern listeners of course are now programmed also to imagine centaurs and centaurettes, nymphs, satyrs and Greek gods, courtesy of Walt Disney’s amazing 1940 film, Fantasia!
The 7th Symphony, by contrast, is a rhythmic wonder, a marvellous journey through ecstatic orchestration, ending in one of the most exciting finales to any symphony ever written. It was premiered in Vienna on 8th December 1813. Wagner called it “the Apotheosis of the Dance” and who are we to disagree? Mind you, Sir Thomas Beecham did claim that the third movement sounded “like a lot of yaks jumping about”, but this was very much a minority view!
The concert on Thursday March 5th in the Usher Hall was a triumph both for the SCO and Maxim Emelyanychev. A sizeable audience was enthralled by the electric conducting of the young Russian, who looked like a Romantic hero from Tolstoy, with his expressive batonless style and flowing locks. The orchestra was set up with violins on either side, violas and cellos behind them but in front of the woodwind, brass and timpani, and the three double basses even higher up in the organ gallery, dominating proceedings. This gave the whole string tone an extra sonority, especially in the second movement of the 7th . Another delight was the use of natural trumpets and horns, as well as what Louise Goodwin, the percussionist, described in the programme as “natural skin “pots”, smaller copper drums covered in goat skin”. Her playing was fascinating and brilliant!
The woodwind (special mention for Andre Cebrian, Flute, Robin Williams, Oboe, Maximiliano Martin, Clarinet and Tony Liu, Bassoon) were absolutely fantastic, especially at some of the speeds they were asked to play by Emelyanychev. This would be my only criticism of the concert: that several of the tempi were verging on the supersonic, to the extent that inner detail was occasionally lost in the rush. It led to a certain breathlessness of performance that I imagine Emelyanychev will reflect on as he matures as a conductor, but it made for thrilling listening. Beecham’s yaks would have had heart failure jumping about at that tempo! The juxtaposition of these two great and well-loved symphonies allowed us to reflect again on the wondrous genius possessed by Beethoven. To be able to create something centuries ago, for a very different audience and indeed society, when life was fragile with disease and war (Vienna was besieged and taken by Napoleon only six months after the Pastoral was premiered, and the 7th was part of a charity concert for the wounded of the Battle of Wagram in 1809, where Napoleon defeated the Austrians again), is a testament to the power of music to transcend mundane reality. We are indeed lucky to be able to enjoy the creations of that marvellous, curmudgeonly, deaf composer and the SCO are to be commended for allowing us here in Edinburgh to appreciate all his symphonies in this anniversary year.
