Symphony closes out season with Beethoven, Arutiunian
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BY JOHN CUTLER / For the Lincoln Journal Star
Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra ended its season with a rousing Saturday night performance of works by Beethoven and Aleks-andr Arutiunian.
Orchestra principal trumpeter Michael Thompson was up front for the Arutiunian showpiece, one often performed by graduate-level students seeking entrance to the prestigious music schools.
A decisive orchestra opening made the job easier for Thompson. A good clarinet melody precursor to the trumpet’s theme also sparked interest as the work began.
While the piece is just one movement, it is divided into three sections. The slower middle part requires a mute, and Thompson took liberties with the pace of this section, showing his maturity.
The final movement could have been a blur of notes. But Thompson held the line on articulation and, with the excellent acoustics of Kimball Recital Hall to assist, the work sparkled. Kudos to Thompson on a job well done.
Symphony conductor and artistic director Ed Polochick took about five minutes to explain the new thinking about performing Beethoven’s triumphant “Eroica” Third Symphony.
As we learned earlier this year with Bart van Oort’s pianoforte concert for the Abendmusik series, a lot of research is being done on performance techniques of Classical-era works. Such is the case with Beethoven, too.
Polochick explained how taking the tempo of the first movement in one beat per measure, rather than three changes the sound and perspective. The result lightens up the music, making it almost a Viennese waltz rather than a heavy work.
Several additional “period” techniques were used throughout the orchestra’s performance of “Eroica,” including extending rests and emphasizing note articulation.
The one-beat technique helped the piece get off to an excellent start and kept attacks precise and on the money. Intense communication among sections also helped in lightening up the symphony sound.
An excellent oboe solo got the second movement started well. Violin passages, which often seem muddy in large orchestra recordings, were much easier to hear and delightfully clean in this slow section.
Jitters may have hit the ensemble as the scherzo third movement began. Things didn’t come down together for a few measures, but eventually they evened out. A handful of great short flute solos kept the audience interest intense.
Conductor Polochick moved around a lot on the podium. He did this to spark feelings from the orchestra in its presentation.
No wonder the audience was snickering as Polochick danced his way through the final movement, which is a dance tune with variations. Even orchestra members were smiling as they played the catchy Beethoven melody.
A small group of strings balanced against the orchestra in the first part of the movement, almost as if Beethoven were creating a salon dance. The players were precise in their execution.
Again Polochick insisted on articulation and some early cutoffs in this section, evoking a more Classical-period approach. The result was well received by the crowd. Many of the 550 patrons stood and cheered as Polochick saluted the work’s soloists.
The conductor was right: What we used to think of as the dark, muddy, overblown “Eroica” became light, airy and transparent, yet full of enough sonority to know why the work blew away classical purists when the piece was first performed.
Congratulations to Polochick, the orchestra and trumpeter Thompson for a great season finale.
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The tempos were a nice approach to authenticity, but the style of the winds & horns was not. The smaller, more distinctive, sounds of wind instruments of the late classical period would not have covered the strings, even though the gut strings of the era would have been a much softer, cleaner timbre. In fact, if the string section had been any larger than what was utilized by the LSO, then the winds would have been doubled. The horns would have had a much smaller bore resulting in a brighter, more articulated sound, but with a heavy hand muting to allow for the utilization of hand horn technique. Instead, the horns, particularly the principal horn buried the orchestra, even the trumpets. I must give credit to the trumpets in serving their role as pitched percussion beautifullly.
Again, the tempos were a nice touch, but that knowledge has been around for awhile and definitely not unique. "