From Berlin with love

The Philharmonia Quartett Berlin (at left) really needs no introduction, given the orchestra referenced by its name - these are four players on holiday from what is probably the best (and certainly the most prestigious) symphony on the planet.  Be that as it may, however, they're still orchestra players - who are often known more for sublime craft than for electricity or passion.

Which isn't to say the Philharmonia only colored within the lines at their Celebrity Series concert last weekend (their Boston debut) - they just rarely let rip.  But at the same time, they undemonstratively demonstrated something far more than craftsmanship (even far more than the finest craftsmanship).  Their readings of the Shostakovich Quartet No. 13, Beethoven's "Razumovsky" and Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" revealed superb insight and an unfailing musical intelligence.  I'm glad I heard them. But at least until the Schubert,  a sense of over-arching musical meaning often eluded these expert players, perhaps because they seemed to prefer attention to detail to construction of a grand statement.  Having shed their conductor (these days the erstwhile Simon Rattle), you sometimes got the feeling they still needed one.

The Shostakovich quartet - a late one - proved most problematic.  In it the Russian master faces death squarely, like Beckett, and without illusion or even hope; still,  despite its bracing honesty, the piece clearly is keening at times - other moments come off as paroxysms of sheer terror - and the composer's characteristic wicked scratch still has a little life left in it.  Even more to the point, the quartet closes with a seeming scream, and then a few clock-like ticks: the last seconds of life are dripping out.  Yet the Philharmonia's studious approach seemed to bring out every facet of the work without conveying either its grief or its sense of bitter acceptance; thus it was absorbing as a musical demonstration without being gripping as drama.

Better was the Beethoven "Razumovsky" - even though again the Philharmonia's devotion to detail seemed to undo the kind of impression the piece can make in other hands.  But to be fair, this time the problem lies right in the music: the "Razumovsky" seems to steadily pose brilliant, even grand, ideas, only to diminish them, even fritter them away - and the Philharmonics (that's what I'll call them from now on) refused to fudge on that; they followed Beethoven's instructions to the letter.

The best, fortunately, was yet to come: the famous Andante con moto of "Death and the Maiden" was just about everything it should be: sublimely lyrical, yet delicately poised and effortlessly balanced.  This music, of course, lies near the beginning of the long sweep of nineteenth century music that is the Berlin's specialty, so it was no surprise the quartet should have such a nuanced understanding of it.  But I was almost shocked by what came next (as an encore): a really stunning reading of the slow movement from Debussy's single string quartet; in a way, it struck me as the best playing of the night.  But then Debussy is all about texture, about atmosphere, rather than statement; and this offered the Philharmonics' wonderful craft a special opportunity to shine.

Beethoven goes baroque

Ludwig van with a manuscript sketch of the Seventh Symphony.

Boston is a funny little town in which the music press is absolutely determined to not tell the public the news. For years, the city has been bustling with early music activity, and by now it boasts three or four of the best period music organizations in America (H&H, the Boston Early Music Festival, Emmanuel Music and Boston Baroque). These days, it's widely recognized as probably the center of period performance in the country.

Yet most Bostonians are utterly innocent of this fact. They don't know anything about what probably counts as their hometown's major musical achievement of the last few decades. Because they're never told about it. Oh, the local press dutifully notes, and even reviews, the zillions of period music concerts that now dot the city's calendar. But they cover the scene the way they covered the build-up to the Iraq War - they dutifully record the detail, but resolutely refuse to connect the dots. By now, there should have been cover stories in the Globe, and of course a special on WGBH - which I know is a laughable proposition right there; WGBH doesn't give a damn about its home city's arts scene, we all know that. Its idea of "arts programming" is Jared trying to talk Emily into spending her beer money on the ballet!

Swaddled thus in blissful ignorance, Bostonians are happy to imagine their music scene is precisely what the local deep pockets tell them it is. In this la-la land, the BSO is the big, and indeed only, artistic game in town, and there an end. Now don't get me wrong; James Levine is a fantastic craftsman, and when he's around, the BSO sounds fabulous. It's very pretty - and oh my god the passion, etc.! We all know the drill - which doesn't change the fact that the BSO is a sideshow of the Met and essentially a showcase for the very best suburban music that educated money can buy.

Meanwhile the smart money goes elsewhere - and one place it goes is Boston Baroque, which last weekend essayed a program with the Big Kahuna of period music squarely in its sights - the program ended with Ludwig van's famous Seventh Symphony. Beethoven, to those unfamiliar, is both boundary and watershed for the early music movement. He stands at the cusp of the explosion in musical technology which essentially created the "modern" orchestra, just as he stood on the hinge between the classical and romantic periods. So does he belong in the modern or period musical camp?  Mainstream symphonies are loathe to give him up, as they've had to cede Handel, and Haydn, and even much of Mozart, to early music specialists. And yet I find over and over that the most exciting and revelatory Beethoven I hear is done on period rather than modern instruments.

So I was hoping for big things from Boston Baroque - and they mostly didn't disappoint, although conductor Martin Pearlman did get carried away with the whole "apotheosis of dance" thang that everybody likes to cite about the Seventh these days, and let the last two movements get repetitively loud and bangy. (This is probably in the notation, I know - but remember Beethoven was practically deaf by the time he wrote this symphony!) There was more exciting work early on - particularly in the first movement, in which Pearlman pulled off the strange trick of showing us how Beethoven slowly assembles his trademark sound from the different sections of the orchestra (in contrast, modern instruments, with their smooth, glossy surfaces, always blend too much into one another). And for once the rough edge of the natural horns sounded absolutely wonderful - indeed the lusty, raucous volleys from the brass resounded in Jordan Hall like the calls of post horns across the 19th-century countryside.

Beethoven wasn't the only big name on the program, though, which opened with Mozart's Symphony No. 33, a charming early work that the orchestra played with clean, elegant brio. The symphony all but brims with melodic ideas, and is lit by Mozart's youthful confidence, but its development isn't particularly challenging or even interesting - you get the feeling the young genius just didn't have time for that (and who can blame him?).

Pearlman returned to Beethoven for the evening's second highlight, the solo scene "Ah! perfido" sung by local gal-made-good Barbara Quintiliani (at left).  Ms. Quintiliani is blessed with a big, gorgeous voice that can be lusciously ripe one moment then thrillingly stern the next - which is perfect for "Ah! perfido," in which the soprano turns on a dime between condemning her faithless lover and pathetically begging for pity - or even his return.  Her later excerpts from Cherubini's “Medée," played less to that dichotomy, and were a little meandering too, and so were less gripping.  Even here, though, Quintiliani made a powerful impression - and left me longing to hear her in Verdi, where it seems her mix of emotional honey and intellectual authority might reach its greatest pitch.  We don't hear Verdi much in town these days, more's the pity - maybe some local opera company will catch Quintiliani and decide to change that.  At any rate, she deserves to be a bigger star, and something tells me someday she will be.

Roger that, Sir Roger

During the breather between Beethoven's Fourth and Sixth at Symphony Hall last weekend, conductor Sir Roger Norrington was invested with an honorary doctorate by the New England Conservatory (above). It was a charming (and affectionate) gesture, but in a way an ironic one - because it was Sir Roger who had just taught us all about Beethoven, rather than the other way around.

Of course here in Boston, we always imagine that we're at the head of the class, even when we're actually in the last row (Norrington's Beethoven long ago took the world by storm - indeed, it's hard to believe his game-changing recordings of the nine symphonies were issued in the 1980s). And while yes, we've heard Sir Roger often over the last few years at Handel and Haydn, he has usually been conducting Haydn (at which he's quite wonderful); I believe this is the first time we've heard his take on Beethoven live in the Athens of America.

Thinking again about the concert, I'm drawn inevitably to that tired old critical cliché, "revelation." I know, I know - if you don't like that hobbled old warhorse, try, as thesaurus.com suggests, "divination," "earful," or "epiphany." But really, the Sixth in particular was, indeed, a revelation - or at least a rapturous demonstration of the virtues of period playing and instrumentation. And perhaps it even stood as a witty, friendly rebuttal to Harry Christophers, H&H's current artistic director, who argues that period playing is best suited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

For perhaps of any of the great composers, Beethoven has been most obscured by Wagnerian trends toward symphonic gloss and grandness. With the drier, more plangent tones of period instruments, you lose much of that golden, Germanic glare that coats so many modern performances, and suddenly a whole landscape of detailed musical architecture opens up before you; there were delicate little accents from the winds in the opening movement of the Sixth, for instance, that I swear I've never heard before. And Sir Roger's much-debated decision to follow Beethoven's own metronome markings does, indeed, sometimes shock (as in, can that theme really be going that fast?), but it also results in a sense of constant engagement, and transforms the music from "profound" pronouncement into brilliant conversation.

All this was immediately evident in the opening bars of the under-rated Fourth. Elegant, forceful, and beautifully constructed, the Fourth plays like a kind of turbo-charged classicism - but as it doesn't tap into the heroic depths found in its younger and older siblings, the Third and Fifth, it has never achieved their cultural profile. Norrington didn't, I think, change anybody's mind about that, and he seemed to lose focus in a surprisingly slack second movement - but he and the orchestra recovered brilliantly for a truly dynamic (even glittering) finale.

Then, of course, came the Sixth - the work you always argue with yourself over when you're trying to decide which Beethoven symphony is your most favorite one of all. Here it was leaner, and yet more lyrical, than you may remember it, while at the same time the scene-painting (the rippling brook, the bird-calls in the forest, the gathering storm) felt more specific than ever. Norrington generally kept things light and quick, but not rushed (perhaps he himself has eased off on the accelerator pedal), and he toyed bemusedly with tipsy rhythms in the "merry gathering" movement (with the winds repeatedly lurching in almost too late for their cues). The storm felt more sudden, and more tempestuous, than usual (kudos to John Grimes's galvanic work on timpani), and thus its aftermath all the sweeter. Like Beethoven's country folk, we, too, felt that something of great power and beauty had just passed overhead.

Quartet for the end of time

A promotional video for the Artemis String Quartet: Eckart Runge (cello), Natalia Prischepenko and Gregor Sigl (violins), and Fredemann Weigle (viola).

In a word, "Wow." Or in a few more words, "Wonderful, but . . ." and then "Oh hell, wow!"

Although actually, does "wow" really cover the small miracle the Artemis String Quartet made of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 (Opus 132) last Friday in their Celebrity Series debut? Somehow "wow" doesn't seem profound enough.

For what this youngish quartet from Berlin tapped into wasn't mere dazzle, although they have plenty of that at their command. Dazzle doesn't bring tears to your eyes. It doesn't make you reconsider your life and every mistake you ever made. It doesn't remind you of the fact that No. 15 is the quartet that inspired Eliot's Four Quartets, and their haunting obsession with how, precisely, artistic experience transcends time.

No, "dazzle" is what came earlier in the program, when the Artemisians (the Artemii?) essayed the early Quartet No. 2 in G Major (Opus 18), which is one of the most delightful pieces Beethoven ever produced. It's known as the "Compliments" Quartet, and as you might guess from that moniker, it's a sweetly diverting valentine to Haydn and (especially) Mozart. And in their all-around refinement and casually classicist technique - led by the calmly brilliant Natalia Prischepenko on first violin - the Artemis seemed to own it from its opening bars.

There's not, perhaps, too much meat on the bones of this delicious confection, however, and when the Artemis leapt forward in time (and Beethoven's development) to Quartet No. 11 (the "Serioso"), suddenly their very facility began to sound a little too light and self-satisfied. The last quartet before Beethoven's transcendent final phase (and written while Napoleon was attacking Vienna, the composer's home at the time) the "Serioso" is a compact, muscular-yet-almost-fragmented experiment full of hairpin turns and unexpected outbursts; listening to it, you feel you're overhearing some sort of private, impassioned argument, and Beethoven himself was quoted as saying it was not meant for public performance. Yet the Artemis seemed to imagine it could conjure the work's furies from the same impeccable craft it had brought to the "Compliments" Quartet. The results were, indeed, impeccable, but strangely empty. Thus my first impression of them ("Wonderful!") began to be tinged with caveats (as in "Wonderful, but . . . ").

No. 15, however, proved to be a revelation. Then again, it always is in great hands. Its famous central movement, subtitled "“A Sacred Song of Thanks from One Made Well, to the Divine” refers to the composer's (brief) return to health in 1825 after a bout of abdominal maladies (the great man would, however, pass away only two years later). It wouldn't be incorrect to term this movement a hymn, and one that might be the most poignant thing Beethoven ever wrote. Here what felt like misguided artfulness in the Artemis version of No. 11 seemed to re-coalesce as a transcendent sense of balance. The piece seemed to not merely resound with a profound sense of gratitude, but also prefigure the composer's awareness that death, inevitably, awaited him (as it does us all). And was it too much to hear in the strange, free lyricism of its last movements the sense that something lies beyond that, too, that death itself can somehow be transcended? If I had the talent of T.S. Eliot, I might have left Jordan Hall and begun writing my own Four (or Five) Quartets, I suppose. As it was, I had to content myself with a sacred song of thanks to the Artemis String Quartet.