Mediocre Overture to a Stunning Feature

BEETHOVEN'S SYMPHONY NO. 9
Location: Sanders Theatre
DATES: Dec. 2-3
PRESENTED BY: Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus

Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra closed its first ever collaboration with the Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus last Saturday night in front of a sellout crowd in Sanders Theater.

The concert featured Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the holiday season-appropriate themes of peace and joy dominated the program. Though two of the first three pieces could have stood by themselves, the audience waited with bated breath in anticipation of Beethoven’s masterpiece, and consequently the opening three pieces seemed like an overture.

The first piece, perhaps fittingly an overture to Beethoven’s Fidelio, is frequently played—and for good reason. Its mixture of emotive passages from the woodwinds and triumphant cadences from the strings make for an enjoyable and meaningful experience. Though the opening was a little shaky, the orchestra pulled it together for the most part by the middle and end of the overture. However, the winds struggled throughout, as the clarinets and the French horns both frequently botched their entrances and strayed from pitch.

The following piece, Felix Mendelssohn’s verleigh’ uns frieden, opened beautifully, with bassoon and bass accompanying the chorus. This Lutheran prayer for peace was moving and skillfully handled by both chorus and orchestra. There were a large number of musicians on the stage for such a small performance venue, and both ensembles controlled their expression brilliantly, resulting in an emotive and comprehensible dialogue between the instruments and voices.

Joseph Haydn’s te deum did not suffer from any outstanding performance errors but was clearly the weakest piece in the program. It is extremely important that a piece by such a thoroughly classical composer as Haydn be played lightly, and in this sense, these pieces can be technically more difficult than apparently more demanding ones. Perhaps for this reason, the third performance failed to impress on the level of the first two or the musical epic to come.

After a brief intermission the audience refilled the theater. Many consider the Ninth Symphony to be Beethoven’s greatest composition and one of the most influential pieces on the Western Canon, because of its deep psychological exploration of solitude that evolves to an overwhelming affirmation of universal brotherhood.

The first movement opens with a series of tonally ambiguous bursts invoking images of creation and the cosmos. For the first time, it seemed that the orchestra was entirely involved with the music, and the result was significant and exciting. The second movement is a difficult combination of duple and triple meter, and it gave the orchestra some trouble. The tempo dragged and notes were often out of place, but the oboes, clarinets and bassoons blended beautifully in the central trio section of the movement. It was the best the winds sounded all evening.

According to conventional symphony form, a slow movement follows the opening, and a light, dance-like movement precedes the final movement. Beethoven switched these in the Ninth to increase the dramatic buildup before his grand conclusion. Beethoven’s intentions were well understood by the orchestra, as the chorus took its place on the stage before the third movement, although they only enter in the fourth, so they would not interrupt the flow.

Beethoven’s organization of the opening of the fourth movement is particularly intriguing. In the style of an operatic recitative, the winds present the head of a theme from earlier in the symphony, followed by a sinking figure in the cellos and basses. Each theme presented by the winds is rejected by the low strings until the winds finally present a variation of the familiar “Ode to Joy” theme, which is enthusiastically taken up by the low strings, then the violas and the violins, and finally the entire orchestra and even the chorus. The solo vocalists, especially baritone Sidney Outlaw, were superb.

The praises of Sander’s Theatre as an acoustical masterpiece have been sung many times before but it bears repeating. The sound of the orchestra and chorus resonated deep within the wood paneled walls and surrounded the audience with Beethoven’s musical interpretation of the famed “Ode to Joy” poem by Friedrich Schiller, whose message of universal brotherhood under the wings of joy regardless of race, religion or political standing is as relevant today as it was in Beethoven’s time.