On Board With Beck’s Beethoven Survey

In Beethoven’s lifetime, his two most popular pieces were the “Moonlight Sonata” and the Septet in E-flat major. Guess which one had some of its material featured on Saturday evening as pianist Steven Beck continued his complete survey of the master’s 32 piano sonatas aboard Bargemusic.Wrong. The “Moonlight” was nowhere to be found, as Mr. Beck has established a rule for these concerts: only one nicknamed sonata each evening (we will get to it in due time). No, it was indeed the jaunty septet, or at least the minuet from it that doubles as the second movement of the piano sonata Opus 49, No. 2.This is a lovely little piece, one of the ignored, or at least downplayed, in the grand set. Mr. Beck sailed through it with a good deal of spirit and a fine, tasteful fluency. In fact, this evening was all rather pleasant, not dominated, as many Beethoven evenings are perforce, by grandiosity and gravitas. For one following the entire series, this was the restful interlude.Mr. Beck made a last-minute substitution, performing the Opus 2, No. 2, rather than the Opus 31, No. 3, and then launched into one of the earliest of the great sonatas, the No. 7 in D major. This confident artist boldly announced the opening theme, whose first four notes contain virtually all of the material of the movement. He then navigated expertly through the many variants on this motto, Beethoven making so much out of so little.I was delighted with his choice of tempo in the gorgeous Largo e mesto second movement. Many practitioners perform it much too slowly, milking its already intensified emotions beyond the bounds of good taste. Even from a historical perspective this is wrongheaded, as the more declarative, less vibratory pianos of Beethoven’s day could never sustain this solemn reflection at such slow speeds. But Mr. Beck treated it more as an andante, establishing a superb singing line and letting the phrases breathe naturally. This was the highlight of the evening. The Menuetto was satisfying, illustrating this pianist’s enviable lightness of touch. The humorous Rondo was suitably rollicking. Altogether a solid effort.This night’s nickname, “Les Adieux,” was a controversial one in the Beethoven household: a slice-of-life biographical narrative depicting Beethoven’s feelings on the departure of his friend and patron, Archduke Rudolph, who had been the inspiration for several famous works, including the Archduke Trio and the Missa Solemnis. Beethoven called the piece “Das Lebewohl” because the cadence of the latter word, translated as fare-thee-well, fit perfectly the opening motto of this highly, almost disarmingly, personal work. His publisher, however, introduced it to the world as “Les Adieux,” activating some of that infamous Beethovenian bile.In any case, Mr. Beck presented a noble performance, full of fellow feeling and intelligent phrase-making. Thirty-two sonatas are a lot to memorize, and so he enlisted the aid of a score and page-turner for this particular endeavor. This maneuver turned out to be a blessing, as it eliminated a personal quirk. Mr. Beck sometimes inserts minuscule pauses into his performances, fractions of seconds that seem to allow him to collect his thoughts, but which wreak havoc on his rhythmic flow. No worries when the printed music is before him.This was a sensitive rendition, the Abwesenheit, or the Absence — we will stick to the German so as not to offend Beethoven’s memory — drippingly liquid in style and flawless in technique, the Wiedersehen joyous and infectiously enthusiastic. Clearly, the relationship between Ludwig and Rudolph was much more than that of patron and craftsman. This has been a very impressive series. When he is older and more established, perhaps Mr. Beck can take three years, as András Schiff is now doing, rather than two months, and run this gauntlet again.Much has changed on the Fulton Ferry Landing since Olga Bloom first moored her retired coffee barge at the docks. On Saturday, the area was teeming with people, Olafur Eliasson’s waterfall was careening off the bridge, and tour buses were there in force. There is a new park next to the barge and plans to build a hotel have also been approved. The views, of course, are spectacular. Bargemusic is no longer a remote, quixotic destination. And it only took 25 years.* * *“The Crucible” made its premiere at New York City Opera in 1961 and its composer, Robert Ward, has been dining out on it ever since. Based on the tendentious Arthur Miller play, the opera soon became a staple in the repertoire of smallish amateur and university companies throughout the country. The Dicapo Opera Theatre, one such company that operates out of a church basement on the Upper East Side, selected it as its season opener, beginning its run Thursday evening with a reasonably good performance.The musical vocabulary is what would have been labeled in the 1960s as “modern,” a slightly extended tonality that would have seemed normal in, say, an opera by Richard Strauss. The idiom is strictly American, a child of the Hollywood of the 1940s. In Mr. Ward’s gesamtkunstwerk the music is there to serve the drama, to keep it moving in its intensity. The music, however, never flowers on its own, remaining a bit player throughout.There are no discernible melodies per se, but rather a consistent technique of phrase construction wherein a snippet of vocal sound is built on a simple tonic-dominant tonality until its last note, which is both elongated and slightly dissonant. This is a gutsy way to compose, but ran into some trouble when the bulk of the Dicapo players had difficulties in hitting and sustaining these concluding discordant pitches.This is an ensemble piece, so individual singers have less of a shining role than in other styles of musical theater. Still, some of these predominantly young people were worthy of special praise. Zeffin Quinn Hollis was a powerful John Proctor, matched in resonance by the Reverend Hale of Matthew Lau. Lynne Abeles was impressive as Mary Warren, a welcome relief from the pervasive straining of the other undeveloped female voices. In a key character role, Nicole Farbes-Lyons handled the exoticism of the slave Tituba with aplomb, although she seemed just a tad uncomfortable with its stereotypical dialect.The orchestra was generally persuasive, led passionately by conductor Pacien Mazzagatti, but sometimes its very enthusiasm caused problems, the singers rendered inaudible by a barrage of brass in a work that engineers dozens of tense climaxes. The sets of John Farrell were starkly minimal, everything being either black or white in the best Puritanical tradition. Even the characters were devoid of color: males in whiteface, females in unflattering black dress. The sight of one witchy woman in nightdress — and even that was an off-white — was suitably shocking.Although “The Crucible” is quintessentially American opera, this production had a decided Hungarian flair, with both director Róbert Alföldi and costume designer Sándor Daróczi from the old country. Add to this a number of Hungarian guests in the audience and it was clear that something unusual was going on. Actually, this performance was the opening night of the Opera Competition and Festival of Szeged, where companies from France, Poland, Germany, and America will converge in November for an international celebration that will be documented by Mezzo Television.

On Board With Beck’s Beethoven Survey

On Board With Beck’s Beethoven Survey

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