Per la quinta puntata del mio personale contributo alle celebrazioni del duecentocinquantesimo anniversario della nascita di Beethoven, cominciamo ad occuparci dei capolavori più conosciuti dal grande pubblico. Il Concerto in do minore op.37, terzo dei cinque per pianoforte e orchestra composti dal musicista di Bonn, è una pagina che ha sempre goduto di grandissima popolarità presso il pubblico e gli interpreti. Il pezzo fu scritto nel 1800, ma fu probabilmente abbozzato già nel 1797. Infatti tre abbozzi di questo Concerto sono presenti nella raccolta Kafka del British Museum; due di essi si riferiscono al primo tempo; il terzo, destinato originariamente al Rondò, è rimasto inutilizzato. Il manoscritto originale del Concerto in do minore, conservato nella Deutsche Staatsbibliothek di Berlino, reca sulla prima pagina la scritta Concerto 1800, da L. van Beethoven. Il che vuol dire che nel 1800 la musica doveva essere già stata abbozzata per lo meno nei suoi elementi essenziali, anche se non completamente elaborata. I rimaneggiamenti si protrassero fino al 1802 ma non è da escludere che altre modifiche e aggiunte siano state introdotte posteriormente fino al momento della consegna della partitura all’ editore. Del resto, recenti analisi scientifiche condotte sul manoscritto originale ipotizzano che la data apposta da Beethoven sia da correggersi in 1803. La prima esecuzione assoluta del pezzo si tenne al Theater an der Wien il 5 aprile del 1803, con Beethoven stesso al pianoforte e sotto la direzione di Ignaz von Seyfried. L’ anno successivo il Concerto fu eseguito con Beethoven sul podio e Ferdinand Ries come solista.

Come tutti gli specialisti beethoveniani hanno scritto nei loro lavori, il Terzo Concerto per pianoforte è uno di quei brani che segnano l’ inizio della cosiddetta “seconda maniera” nello stile compositivo del maestro. Come stabilito nella struttura di questa rubrica, propongo adesso due contributi critici. Leggiamo per prima questa presentazione del musicologo Ron Drummond tratta da un programma di sala scritto per un concerto della Northwest Sinfonietta.

Aperçu of Apotheosis

The Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor was written during an extremely well-documented period of Beethoven’s life, yet determining the precise circumstances of its composition has proven difficult. Long thought to have been composed in early 1800 for Beethoven’s first benefit concert, the recovery of the autograph score (lost during the Second World War) in 1977 revealed Beethoven’s handwritten notation, “1803”, which forced a reevaluation. What puzzled scholars was the fact that the Third Piano Concerto does indeed belong stylistically to the period around 1800 — it has more in common with the First Symphony than with the Third Symphony or the “Waldstein” sonata. But it’s precisely such apparent contradictions that inspire scholars to dig deeper.

What’s now clear is that both dates are correct. During the fall and winter of 1799-1800, Beethoven did indeed start drafting the Third Piano Concerto, intending it for the benefit concert in April. These same months saw composition of the First Symphony, the Septet, and continued work on Beethoven’s two-year project, the six string quartets of Opus 18. Yet he managed to complete the concerto’s opening movement and much of the middle before realizing his compositional pace wouldn’t allow him to make the fast-approaching performance date. So he set it aside and pulled out the score of Piano Concerto No. 1, something he’d been meaning to polish for some time – and that’s what he played at the concert. It was almost two years before Beethoven worked again on the C Minor Concerto, in anticipation of another benefit. When that concert fell through, he once again put it aside. Finally, late in 1802, a concert benefit for the following April was firmly scheduled, and Beethoven went back to work on the concerto a third time, at last completing the slow movement and Rondo finale.

So much for heroic inspiration.

Yet clearly the practical inspirations are not to be underestimated. Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of Mozart’s Magic Flute, had just hired Beethoven as “house composer” for the suburban Theater an der Wein, which meant a hefty salary, free rent on the theater’s apartment (which Beethoven wasted no time moving into), and use of the theater for his own benefit. In return, Beethoven agreed to write an opera.
After completing the concerto, Beethoven, perhaps to warm up to the operatic commission, and recalling his attendance at the premiere of Haydn’s The Seasons the year before, decided to try his hand at an oratorio. Written in less than a month, Christ on the Mount of Olives has not been treated kindly by posterity. Yet advertisements for the benefit in the Wiener Zeitung mention nothing but the oratorio. This is even more astounding when one realizes that, in addition to the Third Piano Concerto, the Second Symphony was also receiving its premiere at the same concert!

Perhaps one is inevitably caught up in the moment’s heat. The morning of Tuesday, April 5th saw Beethoven awake before 5 a.m. When his student, Ferdinand Ries, arrived, he was still in bed, madly copying out the trombone parts for the oratorio. By 8 a.m. , the orchestra and chorus were gathered in the theater, and rehearsals commenced. As Ries later recalled, “It was a terrible rehearsal and by half-past two everyone was exhausted and unhappy. Prince Carl Lichnowsky [one of Beethoven’s patrons] sent out for great hampers of bread and butter, cold meats and wine. In a friendly way he invited everyone to help themselves, which they did with both hands, so everyone was once again in a good humor. Then the Prince requested that the oratorio be tried once more, so that it might come off well in the evening and Beethoven’s first work of this kind be presented to the public in a worthy manner. So the rehearsal began again.” But time soon ran out, and final run-throughs of the other works on the program (which, typically for the time, likely received no more than two or three prior rehearsals, if that) were not possible, as the concert was set to begin at six o’clock.

Though no copy of the printed program has survived, we know that the First and Second Symphonies, the Third Piano Concerto, and the Oratorio were all performed – which meant the concert lasted well over three hours. During the concerto, the theater’s new conductor, Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried, was recruited as Beethoven’s page-turner, which, as Seyfried later recalled, “was easier said than done. I saw almost nothing but empty leaves; at the most on one page or the other a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me scribbled down to serve as clues for him . . . He gave me a secret glance whenever he was at the end of one of the invisible passages and my scarcely concealable anxiety not to miss the decisive moment amused him greatly and he laughed heartily at the jovial supper which we ate afterwards.”

There was much to laugh about, considering the size of Beethoven’s take – 1800 silver florins, several times the annual salary of an average bureaucrat in the Hapsburg government.

Reports of the concert itself focus almost exclusively on the oratorio; its reception was decidedly mixed. As for the other works, one critic wrote that the Second Symphony wasn’t as good as the First Symphony, but at least it was better than the Third Piano Concerto, which suffered because Beethoven, “who is otherwise known as an excellent pianist, failed to perform to the public’s satisfaction.” In comments from others, the concerto, when it’s mentioned at all, is shrugged off or dismissed. Today we can only wonder at such a non-response. But the performance likely suffered from being grossly under-rehearsed and played by a composer who’d lost considerable sleep in the preceding weeks scrambling to complete another work. A second performance the following year, with Beethoven conducting and Ferdinand Ries as soloist, was much better received, the review in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung ranking it “among Beethoven’s most beautiful compositions.”

Beethoven’s first three piano concertos were all inspired by Mozart’s piano concertos; all were an effort to transcend them. It was only with the Third that Beethoven finally succeeded. Though modeled on the Mozart C minor concerto, K. 491, Beethoven’s work need make no apologies. The opening movement is spare, almost hungry, tight in structure, tensely dramatic, with sharp rhythmical contrasts. The E major slow movement is among Beethoven’s most beautiful, a music of depths, sensuous yet, in the long suspended transitions, ethereal as well. A brief written-out cadenza leads into the punning Rondo Finale, with its fugal interlude and final rush to the long-sought musical goal.

Questa presentazione, sicuramente interessante ed esaustiva, è stata scritta da Calvin Dotsey per un concerto della Houston Symphony Orchestra.

The earliest sketch for Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto dates to as early as 1796, when he was touring as an up-and-coming piano virtuoso in Prague and Berlin with one of his earlier piano concertos. As with many of Beethoven’s compositions, however, it would be years before the Third Concerto took its final shape. Though for a time scholars believed that the concerto was written in 1800 (thanks to the disappearance of several sketchbooks and Beethoven’s atrocious handwriting), most experts now believe the bulk of the work on the concerto took place during the autumn of 1802, making it contemporary with Beethoven’s Second Symphony, Christ on the Mount of Olives, the Violin Sonatas Opus 30, the Piano Sonatas Opus 31—and the Heiligenstadt Testament.

The Testament (written in the Viennese suburb of Heiligenstadt) is an important letter Beethoven wrote to his brothers in which he grapples with his advancing hearing loss, contemplates suicide and ultimately decides to persevere for the sake of his art. It is tempting to hear this struggle reflected in the dark, C minor tonality of the concerto, and such an interpretation can by no means be ruled out; however, given the wide variety of moods evoked by the many pieces he wrote around the same time and the fact that that the concerto was first conceived many years before, such an autobiographical reading of the piece must be considered with some reservations. Most believe that the real impact of Beethoven’s crisis can be heard in his revolutionary Symphony No. 3 of the following year. Nevertheless, Beethoven’s intense inner world would have doubtlessly informed his performance of the work at its premiere in April 1803.

Many commentators have noted the military, march-like character of the work’s opening, suggesting the French Revolution and rise of Napoleon as an alternative source of inspiration:

Beginning the first movement’s orchestral introduction, this melodic idea, characterized by a rhythmic, drum-like tattoo, occurs in Beethoven’s earliest sketches. It enters softly, but soon leads a powerful transition to a contrasting second theme: a singing melody in the relative major. The dark mood of the opening then returns, preparing the way for the soloist’s dramatic entrance. The soloist then plays its own versions of the two main themes, embellished with virtuoso passagework.
After an orchestral passage, a more developmental section begins with an exquisite alternation between soloist and orchestra based on the main theme. Further developments lead to a reprise of the main themes and a cadenza, an extended solo for the pianist alone. A gifted improviser, Beethoven would have invented this passage in performance (along with much of the rest of the piano part, as the sketchiness of his original manuscript shows), but in later years when he was no longer performing in public, he wrote down a version of it for other pianists to play. After the traditional trills that end the cadenza, the orchestra reenters with the timpani quietly playing the rhythmic motif from the opening idea. Interestingly, both this moment, one of the most original in the concerto, and the overlapping of the opening idea with itself in the cadenza, are found in Beethoven’s earliest sketch for the composition, suggesting that these were the germinal seeds for the rest of the piece.
After the first movement comes to a stormy ending in C minor, the beginning of the slow second movement in the distant key of E major is utterly arresting. Beethoven’s student, Carl Czerny, said that the opening theme “must sound like a holy, distant, and celestial Harmony.” This hymn-like, soulful melody is introduced by the piano alone. The orchestra then takes it up and completes it, leading to a lovely cantilena that modulates to B major. Piano arpeggios and fragmentary motifs in the flute and bassoon pass through several keys, leading to a reprise of the main theme.

The last note of the slow movement, a G-sharp, is immediately reinterpreted as an A-flat as the soloist begins the finale, plunging the music back into the dark tonality of C minor. This is just the first of many rough-edged musical jokes in a movement filled with surprises. The main theme alternates with contrasting episodes, including several jaunty, major-key tunes and even a learned fugue based on the main theme. In the end, the music turns to a merry, C major coda, as if assuring us that all that came before was only in jest. Together the soloist and orchestra race to an ending full of triumphant laughter.

Calvin Dotsey

La discografia del Concerto in do minore è vastissima, e comprende le esecuzioni di tutti o quasi tutti i pianisti beethoveniani di rilievo. Io ho scelto quattro registrazioni che per diversi motivi ritengo particolarmente significative. La prima della quattro versioni che vi propongo è quella di Clara Haskil (1895-1960) registrata a Parigi nel 1959 con l’ Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux diretta da Igor Markevitch (1912-1983).

Comprai questo disco quando ero ancora un ragazzino agli inizi dei miei studi musicali e si tratta di un’ interpretazione che mi è sempre stata particolarmente cara. Il pianismo elegante, espressivo e le sonorità liquide della pianista rumena si unisce con l’ accompagnamento attentissimo di Markevitch per una lettura prediletta anche da personalità illustri come Charlie Chaplin, che nella sua autobiografia la cita con queste parole:

Often I play her records, the last she made before her death. Before I started the task of rewriting this manuscript for the sixth time, I put on Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Clara at the piano and Markevitch conducting – which to me is as near an approximation of truth as any great work of art could be and which has been a source of encouragement for me to finish this book.

Con l’ esperienza acquisita in tanti anni di ascolti e studi, posso dire senza tema di essere smentito che questo disco è un vero classico della discografia beethoveniana, una di quelle esecuzioni che ogni appassionato dovrebbe conoscere e meditare a fondo.

La seconda versione che ho scelto è quella di Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991) un altro interprete beethoveniano illustre che ci ha lasciato diverse incisioni dei Concerti a partire dal 1941, quando incise il Quinto sotto la direzione di Bruno Walter. Nel 1977 il grande virtuoso e genero di Adolf Busch eseguì l’ intero ciclo dei Concerti di Beethoven a München con la Simphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks diretta da Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996). Da questo ciclo è tratta la registrazione che vi propongo, pubblicata per la prima volta nel 2005 dall’ etichetta austriaca Orfeo. L’ esecuzione avvenne il 4 novembre 1977 nella Herkulessaal della Residenz.

Splendida la lettura orchestrale di Kubelik, un direttore che io da anni prediligo e di cui per me non si parlerà mai bene abbastanza. Serkin conferma anche qui la sua fama di interprete beethoveniano di altissimo livello, come scrisse questo recensore del sito giapponese music.douban.com in occasione della pubblicazione del disco:

Gathered from live performances at three concerts in the autumn of 1977, this collaboration between the 75-year old Rudolf Serkin, the 64-year old Rafael Kubelik , and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra sparkles throughout the five concertos and the choral fantasy. Kubelik and Serkin were legends with decades of masterful performances behind them. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was one of the top orchestras in Europe. Together they combined to produce performances that crackle with intensity and passion. The orchestra stands tall, matching Serkin’s riveting performance note for note. The haunting orchestral playing in the largo of the third concerto was about the best I’ve heard in this concerto, forming a perfect match with Serkin’s playing. I love this music, and each of these excellent performances moves into my top tier of favorite performances (much better than Serkin’s later and more tepid collaboration with Ozawa). Orfeo’s recorded sound perfectly captured the occasion, making this an easy and enthusiastic recommendation.

Un altro pianista beethoveniano che io considero di riferimento è Emil Gilels (1916-1985). Il ciclo integrale dei Concerti da lui registrato insieme a George Szell con la Cleveland Orchestra è senza dubbio una di quelle incisioni che appartengono di diritto alla storia dell’ interpretazione. Anche per lui ho scelto un’ esecuzione dal vivo. Si tratta di un concerto tenuto a Salzburg il 15 agosto 1976 con la Staatskapelle Dresden diretta da Herbert von Karajan.

Gilels appare qui davvero in serata di grazia, insieme a una Staatskapelle che sotto la guida di Karajan mette in mostra tutte le stupende qualità timbriche di un suono che il direttore salisburghese definiva spesso “come di oro antico” e che ispirò a Wagner la definizione Meine Zauberharfe. Una di quelle esecuzioni in cui tutto sembra andare per il verso giusto, assolutamente straordinaria negli esiti.

Concludiamo con un omaggio ad un altro beethoveniano illustre come Alfred Brendel (1931) qui ripreso in un concerto del 2005 con la Lucerne Festival Orchestra diretta da Claudio Abbado.

Anche questa è una lettura di grande qualità, in cui due artisti legati da profonda amicizia personale e da decenni di collaborazione dialogano in maniera assolutamente straordinaria per comprensione reciproca e profondità di idee interpretative.

Chi segue regolarmente i miei post, sa che io evito di stilare graduatorie fra esecuzioni di tale livello. Qui abbiamo quattro esempi di interpretazioni che, ognuna a suo modo, se non raggiungono la perfezione certamente la sfiorano molto da vicino. Buon ascolto a tutti e appuntamento alle prossime puntate di questa serie beethoveniana.