Well, I never thought it could happen; or rather, I never thought it would happen; that one of the world’s leading conductors could systematically dismantle one of the greatest works in the literature of western music, turning what is generally understood as an emphatic ode to freedom and dance into a self-centered, hyperactive wank-fest. That is what Franz Welzer-Möst did to Beethoven’s fervent Seventh Symphony Wednesday night with his Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and it is surely the concert scandal of the season.
I’m not sure if I can even bring myself to write about the first two pieces on the program, for what happened after them left me so rattled that I find it difficult to think about anything else because I’ve been trying to rescue my memory from incorporating any part of Welzer-Möst’s hideous interpretation of the Seventh Symphony. But I’ll briefly note them, since they deserve at least that much, but no more.
The concert opened with one of Debussy’s least impressive orchestral works, Iberia, played with little clarity (which is exactly what Debussy needs to be effective) and less shimmer. This was followed by Matthias Pintscher’s Five Orchestral Pieces(1997) named after that famous work of Arnold Schoenberg. And indeed, Pintscher tries to show us everything we learned about twentieth century music, but not much more. There were some genuine moments of interest, like a tonally chaotic, rhythmic unision in the orchestra that left your ears ringing (which I liked). But one can’t help wondering what new, if anything, this young and handsome composer will bring to this century.
Now, as for the Beethoven…
The first movement started off just fine. No signs of trouble in the water, at first. The stately opening is deft in its formal air, because we’re about to get into some serious frolicking. But when it happens, the entrance of the great first theme, it struck me as Beethoven grandstanding in a modern, obvious way. I had never heard that before. In retrospect, I see now that I can blame Herr Welzer-Möst. Instead of sounding like a glorious declaration of life, it came across as a money-shot, the hit melody we’ve all been waiting for (perhaps Beethoven’s greatest melody).
Then in the second movement, the haunting march whose rhythmic relationships are so tightly wound together that doing something stupid, like, say, playing the grace notes in the counter melody before the beat, rather than in rhythm on the down beat, totally fucks it up. Beethoven’s music has such innate rhythmic tension. And the second movement here rests on the syncopation created by playing the grace notes not “as written” but, rather, as felt naturally. It’s kind of like suddenly deciding to interpret the Bible literally. Instead of humanitarian allegory, you get uncomfortable doctrine. It doesn’t work. And you can feel that it doesn’t work.
Then, after getting through that movement, which was really ransacked with Welzer-Most’s erroneous whimsy, we jump right into the Scherzo of the third movement. Now, I know a scherzo is supposed to be fast, but there was something about Welzer-Möst’s tempo that felt just…just too fast. Some of the figurative accents of the music suddenly sounded odd, more like effects. And although I have argued before that Beethoven is really the first true modernist, I don’t think that he heard the trills as an objectively executed sound effect; rather, they were an expressive musical element. But at Welzer-Möst’s tempo, they came across as some kind of extended compositional technique. You could hear more of the bow on the string than of the effect of the tone. Even at a presto tempo, there is a fine line between a speed that will energize the music and a speed that will cause its nuts and bolts to loosen. And Welzer-Most crossed that line.
But that was nothing compared to what the conductor had in store for us. The final movement (indicated in the score as “Allegro con brio”) was taken presto tempo. I’m telling you, you couldn’t recognize this as the same music. It sounded as if we were hearing it in fast forward. But for what purpose did Welzer-Möst dart into such a sprint? It wasn’t possible to enjoy the music physically–even Wagner called the music from this symphony “the apotheosis of dance”–because it was machine gunning at you. I firmly believe Beethoven’s music urges you to move with it, to feel it, but you can’t when it’s flying at your body at a rate so dashing that by the time it was over, you didn’t know what had happened, your body has no space to absorb the music.
At one point during the last movement, when the turn figure in the strings sounded more like a swarm of bees than a music idea, I began looking around to see if I was alone in my shock, and I found a gentleman across the aisle who made eye contact with me. He gave me the wide-eyed, I feel helpless shrug-shoulders look. Then I noticed a man in front of me shaking his head. But when the piece ended, the audience reaction was largely positive, a few people jumping to their feet. Which concerns me, perhaps even more than Welzer-Möst’s impulsive, hyperactive interpretation: who is this audience, and why did they like this? There is clearly no expectation of taste, of nuance. Does the Carnegie audience really just want to be blown away, like, say, the Time’s Square movie theater audiences that really just want to see the biggest explosions and car chase scenes?
I even read Donal Rosenberg’s review of the orchestra in their hometown paper. He notes Welzer-Möst’s awkward alteration of the rhythm in the second movement, but says nothing about the hurried treatment of the final two.
What has the concert audience come to, then? Are they just sophisticates who believe that the goal of going to Carnegie Hall is to jump up a paw at the conductor, no matter how terrible the interpretation? How are they being educated, and by whom? If Welzer-Möst is left to set the standard for Beethoven interpretation, I fear the worst. That a need for true feeling, over mere sensation, has fallen far by the wayside in our culture. And why? Who is to blame? And who will come along to give it back?
And what a disjunctive change from Boulez’s calculated reserve in his performance with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra to Welzer-Möst’s tense, chihuahua-like shivering on the podium. It was distracting, and proved, in the end, to be a flaw of essence.
Had I not been reviewing the performance, I would gladly have stood up and booed. Maybe it’s time to bring back the tomatoes and heads of lettuce. But then, that would require an audience knowledgeable enough to know the difference between the sublime and the sensational.
The Cleveland Orchestra will give their third and final concert tonight at Carnegie Hall.
Bonus link: Here’s T-Bone Tommasini’s skeptical take on the first concert, Tuesday night.
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