Haydn 99th + Beethoven 9th + Norrington + St. Luke's at Carnegie Hall

This afternoon, the Orchestra of St. Luke's payed tribute to their President, Marianne Lockwood, who is retiring after 35 years at the helm, as they performed symphonies by Haydn and Beethoven led by Sir Roger Norrington at Carnegie Hall.  A fine group of vocal soloists (see below) and the Westminster Symphonic Choir joined for the finale of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

They began with my absolute favorite among all of Joseph Haydn's more than 100 symphonies, No. 99 in Eb Major.  This was the very first Haydn symphony with which I became acquainted, as it was the only one in my father's collection of 78 rpm recordings to which I listened as a child.  It was an anonymous recording, made during the period of the musician's union ban on recording during the 1940s when the wars were being waged about how orchestral and session musicians would be compensated for the sale of their recordings.  In the absence of new recordings by the major orchestras, entrepreneurs emerged to contract with the orchestra musicians and conductors to record anonymously, and a famous old exciting, slam-bang sort of performanced of the Haydn 99 was one of the results.  (I later read somewhere the speculation that the recording was by Eugene Ormandy and musicians drawn from the New York Philharmonic.)  That recording imprinted the symphony on my brain, and I've heard few recordings that measure up.  I must have heard it played live at least once, but I can't recall such an event, so this afternoon was a special treat.  For three of the four movements, I thought Norrington did a splendid job, and the musicians were right there with him.  Where I parted from his approach was in the minuet (3rd) movement.  That old set of 78s contained a fleet and swinging account of the minuet.  Norrington, by contrast, seems to think it is about Austrian peasants wearing heavy wooden shoes, since he took it slowly and heavily by comparison to almost every recording I've heard.  I didn't think it worked very well, but then I am conditioned to want to hear this movement go by much more quickly - like, for example, Jeffrey Tate's superb recording with the English Chamber Orchestra.

In the Beethoven 9th, they increased all of the string sections by one desk above the number used for the Haydn, but I still thought the string sound was a bit too scrawny at times for Beethoven.  This was especially so in the introduction to the fourth movement, where the recitativo passages in the cellos and basses sounded quite scrawny - and Norrington takes them much too fast.  Nobody would sing that fast, and it sounded like a crazy frenzy.  This was odd, since most of the time his tempi struck me as relatively mainstream, more so than on his old recording with the London Classical Players.  Norrington seems to have mellowed, at least when it comes to Beethoven.  Although he still insists on no vibrato in the strings, I saw that he was letting them get away with some of it, and in fact the slow movement sounded positively sumptuous.  It was given a flowing tempo, perhaps slightly faster than the norm, but not so much as to feel rushed except for a few moments where the violin line became impossibly fast given the brisk underlying tempo. 

The first movement sounded a mite underpowered, due to the string complement.  The chorus, on the other hand, had a mighty sound.  As to the soloists, I am always empathetic to the particular problem faced by the baritone soloist - who sits through the first hour of the symphony before making his big entry, unaccompanied, with a leaping upwards interval and a virtuosic cadenza-like passage, which he must perform absolutely cold, having last had a chance to warm up his voice more than an hour before.  The other soloists have it a bit easier, since they begin to sing as a group with the instruments supporting them, but that poor baritone has to go it alone without any chance for error.  On this occasion, Wayne Tigges was up to the task, nailed it right on, and was fine for the rest of the performance as well.  Tenor Eric Cutler contributed some nice swagger in the military variation solo, soprano Jessica Rivera, and mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor contributed powerful sounds in their duet and choral moments, but the solos in this piece, in my opinion, are mostly about the baritone, so I'm glad that so dependable and beautiful a singer as Mr. Tigges was on-stage this afternoon.  The chorus was powerful and very responsive to Norrington's leadership.

I was present all those years ago when Norrington conducted this symphony with St. Luke's in his inaugural appearance as their music director.  (He continued in that capacity for a few years, then reverted to being a regular guest.)  On that occasion, I remember being impressed at how he could make a modern chamber orchestra sound so much like a period instrument ensemble.  So much has changed.  They did not sound that way to me today.  They sounded like a modern chamber orchestra, albeit with somewhat less vibrato than usual in the strings and slightly faster tempi than is the modern norm for this music.  Has Norrington mellowed?  Or have we grown so accustomed to historically informed practice in Beethoven that it no longer sounds so distinctive?  In any event, it was an honorable and moving performance, despite the flaws, and I was glad to hear it.

[Late note: According to the NY Times, there was a late substitution for tenor Eric Cutler.]

Comments

[Online Generic Viagra]

Hey.. I love Orchestra the most.. My father is fond of playing the trumpet and I love it very much..!! Oh I can't explain how lovely he played at the time of Christmas eve..