You’ll get to decide for yourself into which camp Beethoven falls at our upcoming Oregon Symphony concerts this weekend. The concerts are billed as Emanuel Ax Plays Bach & Strauss, but they could have just as easily been entitled Beethoven: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Well, actually, since we’re not playing Wellington’s Victory, there is no ‘bad’, per se, but there is plenty of good, and a bit of ugly. I’ll explain.
The program opens with Beethoven’s great Op. 133 Grosse Fuge (or Great Fugue). It has a unique history in terms of its original version for string quartet. The movement was placed as the sixth and final movement of his B-flat major Op. 130 Quartet. In the quartet, the fugue comes right on the heels of one of his most serene and sublime slow movements, the celebrated Cavatina. It is a long, loud, and almost discordant movement, and it came at the close of a quartet that already was pushing the boundaries of what a 19th century audience could digest, even in avante garde chamber music. So, at the request of his publisher, Beethoven removed the fugue from the quartet, giving it a separate opus number, and the composed an alternate finale (which would be his last completed work for string quartet) that would be a bit more palatable for the amateur musicians who were largely floating the music publishing business at the time. It was a shame that this had to happen, some would say a travesty. It is a huge and confounding movement, but it is an apt counterweight and summing up of the five movements that have preceded it. However, both versions remain, and while it is most common for string quartets to play the movement at the end of the Op. 130 quartet as originally intended, some do still play the alternate movement, and some do the piece on its own as Op. 133. In my string quartet, the Arnica Quartet, we have done all three options at one time or another.
In any event, this Great Fugue is Beethoven at his most serious and uncompromising, and it retains its ability to inspire fear in performers and audiences alike. And what bookends this Beethoven at the close of the concert? His lightest and humor-infused Symphony No. 8. It is Beethoven at his most Haydnesque. He nudges and winks at the audience with his uneven phrases, light and almost frothy orchestrations, and his take on the new infernal machine of the 19th century: the metronome. It’s a masterful bit of programming on the part of Carlos Kalmar, and makes for a very interesting and enjoyable concert to play. Likewise, the two concerti that Emanuel Ax plays in the middle of the program – Bach’s D minor and Strauss’ Burleske – are opposites of a sort, too. The Bach is all High Baroque rigor and intellectual showmanship, while the Strauss is a confection designed for enjoyment and sonic beauty above all else.