Conductor: Alexander Joel
Soloist: Artur Pizarro (piano)
It was indeed with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony that this latest concert in the Kirklees Concert Season took off: before that there was plenty of accomplished music-making, but without the visceral involvement that Beethoven brought to the table.
Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll is a beautiful piece, possibly the best birthday present yet. The story is well known, but worth repeating. Christmas Day 1870 was the occasion of a triple celebration: the birth of Wagner’s son Siegfried, his wife Cosima’s birthday – and, of course, Christmas. Cosima was awakened by the sound of 13 musicians on the stairs playing Wagner’s new composition. Though it used some material from the noticeably warlike operaSiegfried, the Siegfried Idyll, now re-scored for 35 players, is Wagner at his tenderest, with recurrent themes linking the whole thing together. Alexander Joel, a meticulously old-style conductor, fashioned a poised performance – was it perhaps a little staid?
With Piano Concerto No. 1 by Cosima’s father Franz Liszt, the difficulty may have lain with the piece. Unusually for a concerto, it’s in four movements, but even so barely tops 20 minutes. There is much interplay between piano and orchestra, but comparatively little development of the many ideas brought out. Among delights are charming solos for clarinet and cello, among others, and a quirkily odd solo for triangle – and no one can deny the impact of the resounding last bars.
Of course the piano is the main focus of attention. Artur Pizarro, 1990 winner of the Leeds Piano Competition, revelled in the virtuosic elements in the piece, dancing through the trills and tremolos and engaging us emotionally in such elements as the passage in the second movement which reminds us of a Chopin nocturne.
Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony also, like the Siegfried Idyll, has a story behind it that reveals much about the composer. Beethoven was a liberal, a man who believed in equality, and he saw in Napoleon Bonaparte a man who would work to establish liberty. When Napoleon made himself Emperor of France, Beethoven declared, “So he too is nothing more than an ordinary man!”, removed the dedication to Symphony Number 3 and re-christened it “Eroica” (“Heroic”), celebrating “the memory of a great man”.
In other words, there is a lot at stake in this symphony which in scale and intensity opened the door to the 19th century symphony. Joel explored the dynamics of the first movement, with the edgy sound of the trumpets to the fore, but it was halfway through the second movement (a Funeral March, developed in ever more complexity and then collapsing in melancholy) that the performance really caught fire, in a dramatic fugue. From there on the cheerfulness of the last two movements broke out joyously, with wonderful writing for woodwinds, the horns returned to the hunting field and, after all the witty variations of the last movement, the brass topping the orchestra in a glorious conclusion.
Reviewed on 23rd January 2025