Egarr's, and Beethoven's, Seventh

Richard Egarr

There are very few sure things in this life, but Richard Egarr standing at the podium is surely one of them.  His versions of Beethoven's Eighth, and Haydn's "The Clock," in Handel and Haydn's previous seasons, linger in my memory as among of the most original interpretations of a classic I've ever heard.  So my expectations ran high last weekend, when Egarr took the stage, again at Handel and Haydn, to take on two masterpieces, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

And I'll admit I was not disappointed.  It was pretty fantastic. The Clarinet Concerto was merely superb; the Seventh was thrilling - although not, perhaps, quite the full-bore re-invention that Egarr achieved with the Eighth.  This was more a probing investigation that turned the work into a personal statement of painful liberation; in effect, over its course you could feel Egarr painting a harrowing portrait of the tormented composer himself.

Of course he had the huge advantage of working with period instruments; after recently sitting through thoughtfully lumbering versions of the Second, Third, and Fifth from Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Jurowski, it felt like heaven to hear Beethoven done by a nimble ensemble, in an atmosphere more like a salon than a stadium.  With period instruments (particularly under Egarr's direction), the orchestra becomes less an amplifier of power chords, and more of a ruminative intellectual group - indeed, the subtleties and eccentricities of early instruments highlight the almost conversational quality of classical and early romantic music.  The tapestry of statements, repeats, hesitations, echoes, and subtle shifts becomes an intimate debate, an internal dialogue; hearing Beethoven on period instruments, you can forget about World War II and (other, even more titanic) clashes, and simply listen to the music of a great mind at work.

In the Seventh, for instance, Egarr seized on the percussive sighs that punctuate the opening movement and transformed them into an organizing leitmotif for the entire work.  Thus the symphony proper only began when a single, stuttering flute - after almost failing completely (you could feel the remaining movements hanging in the balance) - found the first hopeful notes of the Vivace.  And the famous opening phrase of the second movement, beset by the same stuttering rhythm, was likewise transformed into a tragically self-aware march.  The dialogue between freedom and the weight of weary pain continued unabated; the shackles were first thrown off in the third movement - but then recalled poignantly, and transcended in triumph; and then finally forgotten entirely in the concluding Allegro con brio, which Wagner dubbed "the apotheosis of the dance," and which Egarr drove to the level of frenzy (the orchestra seemed to respond almost preternaturally to every gesture); the response from the crowd was almost as crazed.  But I was meanwhile wondering whether I had discerned in that finale something of the nihilistic mania that Egarr had brought to the Eighth; it occurred to me that this conductor might have an entire symphonic biography of Beethoven up his sleeve.

But I shouldn't forget about the Mozart Clarinet Concerto - the last work Mozart completed, and one which is blessed with one of his most tenderly devastating melodies (thus making it easy to imagine it a kind of unconscious requiem in its own right).  It's also intriguing, however, in that it showcases an instrument, the basset clarinet, which is all but lost to the modern orchestra (the concerto was actually written for a basset clarinet virtuoso, Anton Stadler, a friend and fellow Mason of Mozart's).  

Hoeprich and horn.

That's right: you can only  hear Mozart's last completed work as he intended it on period instruments; for the bulbous, vaguely Seussian basset clarinet has not only a richer, more plaintive tone than its modern counterpart, but also a few extra notes at the bottom of its range (which Mozart makes full use of; modern versions require a re-write to get around this obstacle).  The piece's exuberantly rippling passagework is also a challenge for any soloist; luckily, however, Handel and Haydn could turn to one of its own, Eric Hoeprich (at right), who's a specialist in the basset clarinet, and who darted dazzlingly through Mozart's most demanding sequences.  And I have to admit, his reading of the famous dying fall of the Adagio actually brought tears to my eyes, it was so gorgeous.  My only complaint was that, at least in Symphony Hall, the strings sometimes covered the basset's unique low end when Hoeprich wasn't playing at full force; so perhaps there's still half an argument for the modern clarinet here after all.

The program was filled out with a worthy, but more variable, rendition of Mozart's poignant Masonic Funeral Music (K. 477), which began with a touchingly mournful decorum, but seemed to wobble in tone despite its brief length.  Preceding all was a charming appearance by choruses from Boston Latin, Brockton High, and Lawrence High, who essayed excerpts from Handel's Utrecht Te Deum with clarity and commitment.  Handel and Haydn is making a brilliant move in including these young singers from their outreach programs in their concerts (it not only instills in them a respect for classical music, but no doubt seeds the organization's future audience).  My only comment is that the repeated success of these appearances argues for more stage time (the audience was clearly happy to listen to more from these kids) as well as more support in the program notes.  These performances are no longer experiments, I'd say; they're part of the Handel and Haydn experience - and a very enjoyable part, to boot.  Let's treat them that way. 

Richard Egarr at Boston Early Music Festival

Local early music aficionados know that Richard Egarr is one of the most exciting conductors alive - his recent interpretations of Haydn's "Clock" Symphony and Beethoven's Eighth (at Handel and Haydn) have been nothing short of electrifying. He's the kind of conductor who somehow balances dynamic spontaneity with real intellectual rigor; he doesn't merely conjure rarefied emotional "colors;" he instills ideas in his performances. At an Egarr concert, you can often feel the whole audience on the edge of its collective seat, wondering with delighted anticipation what exactly is going to happen next, what new perspective is going to be revealed - even in pieces everyone practically knows by heart.

So my hopes were high as I settled in for last week's Boston Early Music Festival evening of seventeenth-century harpsichord pieces performed by this daring musician - who got his start as, yes, a keyboardist.

But is it fair or unfair to say that I was slightly disappointed, because the performance wasn't thrilling, but merely very fine?  This is a problem most artists would like to have, I suppose - the problem of past achievements raising expectations to an extraordinary degree. Still, it feels mean-spirited somehow, doesn't it, to carp over quality that is merely rewarding and not as dazzling or thought-provoking as you'd hoped.

Then again, it seemed odd that Egarr's conducting dazzle was often slightly lacking in his own playing, as he himself pointed out that the musical notation of the harpsichord's heyday allowed performers enormous room for improvisation.  (Which is absolutely true - early music notation is sometimes so open it's reminiscent of jazz.)  Perhaps there was simply something a bit constricted about several of the pieces he played, fine as they were; or perhaps Egarr gets most fired up by intellectual, as opposed to simply musical, content (they're not exactly the same thing).  Indeed, I noted that when he turned to larger canvases - when he played the songs of Purcell, or limned the dense fire of Froberger - Egarr seemed to re-gain some of the edge I remembered from his conducting.

Or maybe my dissatisfaction stemmed from the fact that I wasn't quite buying what Egarr was selling in his many comments from the stage (charming and companionable as these asides were).  Egarr likes to point out the many similarities between the harpsichord and the lute - and don't laugh, he's quite right in many ways; both are "plucked" instruments, of course, and early music written for harpsichord looks a lot like music written for lute, with unmeasured stanzas practically free of rhythmic cues.

But is a harpsichord really a giant, mechanized lute, as Egarr quipped?  Somehow I don't think so.  As soon as you listen to a harpsichord, you realize that comparing it to a lute is a bit like pointing out that a sax is just a brass clarinet; perhaps, but this doesn't tell you anything you really want to know.  Not only is the harpsichord's timbre utterly unique - that silvery, melancholy creak that famously has been compared to skeletons dancing - but something of the nature of the keyboard (a kind of geometric abstraction) inevitably seems to manifest itself in its music.  In some deep way it's just not a lute.

Oh, well!  Despite all these quibbles and caveats, I must admit that Egarr is always a subtle and probing performer, whether he thinks he's playing a harpsichord or a glockenspiel.  Alas, he didn't inspire in me the love he clearly feels himself for Louis Couperin (despite the solemn charms of the famous Tombeau de M. de Blancrocher, as well as the richly-wrought Chaconne that Egarr saved for last); for me, in the end, the ornamentation has gotten so encrusted in Couperin that I can't always quite scan where the ornament ends and the actual theme begins. But I was quite taken with Egarr's readings of Purcell - but then I'm always taken with Purcell; what was strange here was to discover the composer's familiar voice "singing" even in pieces such as A New Ground, which are essentially patterns of higher notes moving like lattices over patterns of lower notes (i.e., the "ground").

Even more intriguing were the pieces by Johann Jakob Froberger, a pioneer of program music who doesn't have nearly the modern profile he clearly deserves. His Toccata II in D Minor was compellingly impacted and thorny, while the grimly funny Tombeau fait à Paris sur la mort de Monsieur Blancheroche sparkled with a glints of a peculiarly sardonic sympathy.  Poor Monsieur Blancheroche (whose death inspired Couperin, too) was a famous virtuoso of his day who perished after a drunken tumble down a flight of stairs.  Froberger was actually present at the tragedy, but his elegy comes off as something more like a grimly ironic chuckle; it even closes with a scale that plunges head over heels down into the bass.  M. Blancheroche reportedly gave up the ghost before a priest could administer last rites, so who knows where his poor spirit is lodged now - which only gives a final twist to Froberger's tumbling little joke.  Ah yes - somewhere skeletons are definitely dancing to this one.

Richard Egarr and you-know-who.

Right now the Handel and Haydn Society is on something of a roll. Just a few weeks ago came the stunning Israel in Egypt, in which the chorus took command; but last weekend, it was the period orchestra's turn to amaze. Under the inspired direction of the brilliant Richard Egarr (above), they tore through a slate of masterpieces: the overture to Don Giovanni, Haydn's Symphony No. 101 ("The Clock") and Keyboard Concerto No. 11, and what may count as the most familiar piece of music in the Western canon: Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

First, the Fifth (even though it came last in the program).  You may think there's nothing new to be said about it - and actually, I couldn't claim Egarr delivered a profoundly new interpretation; as always, fate threw down its gauntlet at the opening, and it was taken up in triumph at the symphony's end (through its several ends, in fact). Still, the performance bore an intense personal stamp, and that makes all the difference, doesn't it. Egarr is known for both thoughtfulness and passion - he's fond of lightning shifts in dynamics, as well as calm, pondering reveries; and both were evident in his Beethoven. It was clear he'd thought a lot about the Fifth, and was eager to show us everything he'd learned. Thus though superbly sculpted, his interpretation still felt questioning, almost probing; everything felt deeply considered, and yet everything felt spontaneous.

And as Egarr seems to relate to his musicians as a musician himself (he's a superb keyboardist), he engenders a startling degree of camaraderie with them. (He also, perhaps not incidentally, has a curiously self-deprecating stage charisma.) Perhaps partly as a result of these factors, I don't think I've ever heard the orchestra sound as committed and unified as it did last weekend. New concertmaster Aisslin Nosky seemed to throw everything she had into every entrance, but this was only one facet of the players' palpable collective drive. I personally don't think the Fifth is Beethoven's greatest; it's harmonically simplistic (to be honest) and its great, animating idea - its incredible extrapolation of that fateful opening statement - I'm afraid has grown old for me. Still, when the Fifth builds as it did here, it's impossible not to be taken with it all over again.

Just as it was impossible not to be seduced by the rest of the program (indeed, I preferred the earlier pieces to the finale). Although I’m afraid that Egarr seemed to investigate the Overture to Don Giovanni without coming to any conclusions about it; his somewhat-light reading of it was never dull, certainly - there were eerie or mysterious touches here and there that you don’t often hear. Still, at times his fondness for abrupt swings in dynamic felt more like mannerism than manner.

But then came “The Clock,” perhaps Haydn’s most popular symphony (i.e., his answer to the Fifth), which features a famous second movement of almost hilarious domesticity, marked by a metronomic beat that gives the symphony its sobriquet. Here, unbelievably, Egarr insinuated beneath the tick-tock of that andante a kind of essay on the inexorable nature of time itself; as the movement rose to a climax, it was hard not to feel that a menacing gulf had opened up beneath the superficial gentility of Haydn's themes. But Egarr’s interpretation of the Concerto in D Major was even more startling. It’s the conductor’s belief that the concerto is a response to the meteoric rise of Mozart, and there’s certainly a Mozartean feel to its lyrical flights. But in the second movement, Un poco Adagio, Egarr seemed to push past Mozart to the Romantics (and even beyond). Considering that he was also playing the fortepiano part, the performance was all the more extraordinary – and daring.  For while in the Fifth, Egarr seemed determined to prove that period instruments could be as resoundingly affirmative as modern ones, here he seemed to be meeting head-on a related criticism: that they’re too soft for venues the size of Symphony Hall (I’ve muttered that sometimes myself). In his fortepiano playing, however, Egarr held the audience in the palm of his hand even as his playing slipped toward the gossamer – and then into a whisper, as the faintest mists of accompaniment rose from the strings. For most of the movement, it seemed that everyone in Symphony Hall was holding his or her breath. Rarely has a hush been quite so transporting.

Egarr is electric at H&H

This is just a quick note to say that if you've been on the fence about checking out Richard Egarr's version of Beethoven's Fifth at Handel and Haydn tomorrow - go.  Just trust me - go.  The brilliant Egarr made a brilliant case for Beethoven's Eighth a year or two ago, and so I wasn't surprised that his version of the Fifth was indeed superb; but actually, his renditions of Haydn's "The Clock" and Piano Concerto No. 11 (with himself as soloist) were even more original and arresting.  I'll be writing more about this concert later this week, but the upshot is that this is one of the most electrifying classical performances of the season.

Eighth wonder

The early music movement is by now a scene of such ferment that it should be no surprise, I suppose, that the Handel and Haydn Society should be able to debut an exciting and challenging musician at seemingly each and every concert - yet still, each one still registers as a faint, if pleasant, shock. Indeed, Richard Egarr (left), Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, who led last weekend's "Mozart and Beethoven" evening at Symphony Hall, perhaps even registered as something of a revelation. For here was a musician who not only conducted (and played) a freshly conceived and deeply moving Mozart concerto on fortepiano, but then turned right around and made Beethoven's Eight Symphony sound alarmingly new - and I mean alarmingly new. It will be hard for me to listen to that particular warhorse in quite the same way ever again.

But first, back to Mozart. The evening's program, in truth, hardly cohered, but was instead yet another Mozart-and-Beethoven grab-bag, the kind of mish-mash a friend of mine calls "Mostly Mozthoven." It opened with a curiosity - Mozart's Symphony No. 1, written when the boy wonder was all of eight, which Egarr demonstrated was more than just a charming bagatelle, but clearly revealed the composer's lyric gifts in its simple but pleasing themes (one of which included a charming run and up down the scale) - as well as his confident grasp, even at that early age, of symphonic form. The next offering on the program, however, the A- Major Piano Concerto, seemed a world away from the serene innocence of that first symphony; its second movement, in fact, is one of the most poignant passages in all music, one of those haunting, nakedly emotional moments that can never be "resolved" back into sonata form. Egarr conducted as well as played a fortepiano which sounded a little tinkly to me (and was pretty much swallowed by the orchestra in the symphony), and so I fretted that ghosts of Schroeder and "Für Elise" might haunt the performance. But I shouldn't have worried: during his solo, Egarr seemed to be drawing tragedy directly from a clear, deep well, and I found myself nearly fighting tears.

Strangely, however, the maestro then leapt into the piece's merry third movement with almost inordinate alacrity, and I began to sense something a bit mercurial about Mr. Egarr - or at least, something that reveled in contrast, even for its own sake. The Beethoven half of the program only underlined this impression. The opening piece - the Overture to The Creations of Prometheus - had a dichotomy all but built into its structure; it opens with huge, primal, chords that announce the Beginning of Everything, followed by more humble motifs that one takes as the signature of the frail, fire-less human race. Free of the fortepiano, Egarr brought more clarity to the orchestra's playing, and the performance proved satisfying both in scope and detail.

The Eighth Symphony, however, was more shocking - for here Egarr insisted on an even greater range of dynamic contrast in a work that is generally played as a glossily polished interregnum between the haunting Seventh and the triumphant Ninth. He had his justifications, surely - Beethoven's markings on the score clearly call for "fff" blasts (that's fortississimo); still, perhaps one shouldn't rely on the volume notations of a guy who's basically deaf. The end result of Egarr's approach was an Eighth that glittered brilliantly and yet sounded slightly manic - or even schizophrenic; one sometimes felt one was at one of those horror-movie soirées in which the charming, all-knowing host has poisoned all the aperitifs. Still, I can't deny that Egarr may be on to something about the Eighth - perhaps there is a scream echoing behind its tightly-clenched smile; one could certainly understand if there were. And certainly the orchestra's virtuosic playing once again threw down the kind of intellectual guantlet one has come to expect from Handel and Haydn, and the early music movement in general.