WORCESTER
For fans of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the greater Boston area is the place to be this year: the 2013-14 season features no less than four different orchestras trotting out Beethoven’s immortal “Ode to Joy” between now and next May.
On Thursday, the first of this quadrumvirate — and the only one to be performed in Worcester — performed by conductor Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic, delivered a spry, stirring interpretation of this much loved score at Mechanics Hall. Chorus Pro Musica and soloists Michelle Johnson, Sarah Heltzel, Yeghishe Manucharyan and Robert Honeysucker joined Zander and the orchestra.
To judge from Thursday’s performance, Zander likes his Beethoven fast. Very fast. Clocking in at just around 60 minutes, this was the quickest reading of the Ninth Symphony I’ve ever heard, either live or on disc. And taking this music at a brisk clip, as Beethoven’s metronome markings suggest was the composer’s original intent, has the benefit of clearing away the fusty complacency that can overwhelm and hinder pieces as familiar as the “Choral” Symphony. It also can help accentuate the music’s strangeness and make it sound, well, just how it should: revolutionary.
That certainly was the result on Thursday, where an electrifying energy and a strong musical focus permeated the BPO’s overall reading. Zander emphasized the music’s heroic character, highlighting its many accents and its chiseled, rhythmic profile. There was some beautiful, lyrical playing, too: the opening movement’s second theme swooned, and the luminous third movement variations were an oasis unto themselves. In the second movement, oboist Peggy Pearson gave a deliriously woozy account of her solos in the trio.
Still, playing the music with too much speed can come at a price. In Thursday’s performance, especially in the second and fourth movements, there was some sacrifice of textural clarity and technical precision, and, too often, the symphony’s dynamic range came across as sorely hampered (for instance, very few of the score’s numerous pianissimo markings ever came down below piano).
But such is the strength of the music and the spirit of the BPO’s playing that none of that really detracted from the cumulative result of the orchestra’s performance. By the time the finale — a symphony in itself — rolled around and Honeysucker intoned his stentorian admonition to “take up more pleasant and joyful sounds,” the Ninth’s inner juggernaut was happily churning away.
The finale of this symphony is easily the strangest symphonic movement Beethoven wrote, juxtaposing a good half dozen (or so) unrelated musical forms and styles in an effort to realize, musically, poet Friedrich Schiller’s theme of universal brotherhood in his poem, “Ode to Joy.” On Thursday night, with shorter pauses than usual giving less time to adjust the ear from one section to the next, it all sounded thrillingly bizarre, and the BPO jumped readily and sensitively from fugues to marches to hymns and rounds and so forth.
Chorus Pro Musica sang heartily throughout their appearance (it’s always a good sign in this piece when the opening responsory “Freude!” has a nice bite, as it did Thursday) and navigated Beethoven’s sometimes highly treacherous vocal writing with vigor and ease. The standout among the soloists was Honeysucker, whose warmth and familiarity with his part was clear and comforting.
To begin the evening, Zander led a taut, driving account of Beethoven’s “Coriolan” Overture. Thematically, it was a bit superfluous — there’s nothing, expressively, in the overture that isn’t in the symphony — but, given the relative brevity of the evening and the excellence of the BPO’s playing, it made a wonderful opener, aptly setting the stage for what was to follow.
<!–
–>