After the night of June 6, 1962, the classical music press was abuzz with discussion over the the remarks that Leonard Bernstein, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s then-principal conductor, had made before an unorthodox performance of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor. Bernstein famously distanced himself from the interpretation to be heard that night. He claimed that the vision, with the piece’s tempo nearly cut in half, was that of the soloist – Canadian pianist and enfant terrible Glenn Gould – and emphatically not his.
Beethoven Festival with André Watts
September 18, 8:00 PM
Hill Auditorium
From $17 to $70 ($35 with student discount)
The question over the relationship between soloist and conductor, and who should take final aesthetic precedent, is one that every orchestra must deal with. While to a commonsensical listener it might seem that the final product, the recording, is a straightforward transfer from musical score to the record, the process is in fact defined by a meticulous negotiation of tempo, dynamics and other factors that conductor and soloist have given much thought to. Sometimes, their interpretations diverge.
Next weekend, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra will open its 2014-2015 season with its Beethoven Festival, where concertgoers will hear some of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven’s most iconic, most driven and most bombastic compositions – the Fifth Symphony, the Leonore Overture No. 3 and the Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor Concerto”). For the latter piece, pianist and Jacobs School of Music professor André Watts will be joining the AASO as soloist. While Bernstein and Gould’s difference of opinion proved to be legendary, Arie Lipsky, the AASO’s conductor, is decidedly more accommodating in his attitude toward soloists.
“I usually feel that my job as a conductor is to be a team-player,” Lipsky said. “I am really going to accompany him (Watts),” he stated further.
As an incidental but noteworthy aside, it was early on in Watts’s concert career that he was asked by Leonard Bernstein to replace Glenn Gould in a performance with the New York Philharmonic in 1963, playing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat.
To most ears, the opening bars of the Fifth Symphony are a song as old as time, seemingly eternal. But their celebrity should not obscure the great demands they put upon the orchestra and conductor. That symphony, as well as the overture and concerto, exemplify some of Beethoven’s most momentous dynamic achievements. Sheer volume does not a successful triple fortissimo (the dynamic marking for “very loud”) make – after all, a composition’s loudness only makes sense in relation to its quietest, tenderest passages. Highlighting that is the difficulty for any ensemble setting out on such a program as this one.
“I try to capture Beethoven’s relentless energy,” Lipsky said in describing his principal goal in performing this titan of classical music.
“My biggest challenge in all of these pieces is to find these beautiful, endless, soft passages, and to really bring them out,” Lipsky discussed. “There are some swatches of triple piano (dynamic marking for soft playing), which Beethoven usually shies away from. He typically goes between pianissimo and fortissimo, but there are moments where he puts not two, but the three ‘p’s.’”
Those who attend this event will be in the expert hands of Lipsky, Watts and the AASO’s musicians, as they experience the play of ecstasy and calm, triumph and solemnity, in these celebrated compositions.