Beethoven in Kitchener

I enjoy going to concerts by the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.  It's an excellent mid-size orchestra, and while the programs tend to run to "standard repertoire" there's always some unusual feature in every concert.

Friday night we got mainly Beethoven, but the rare feature was a piece of Beethoven which I really enjoy, and rarely get a chance to hear: the Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra.  Now, the Great Experts (as Anna Russell always called them) have already decreed that the Triple Concerto is second-rate Beethoven.  I beg to differ.  It is unusual Beethoven, but hardly to be judged of poorer quality simply because it doesn't fit neatly into a pigeonhole -- and that seems to be all that some writers have against it. 

Think of it as a concerto for "piano trio and orchestra" and its reference points become clearer.  The use of the term "piano trio" immediately invites a comparison to chamber music, and indeed the solo parts of the piece often function much like a chamber trio.  By the same token, the orchestra necessarily must often accompany at a chamber scale to allow the subtleties of the interplay between the soloists to come through.

Of the small number of recordings of this concerto that exist, many use a roster of soloists.  But on Friday night we got the concerto for piano trio and orchestra played by a real piano trio, and one of the best I know: the Gryphon Trio.  With the solo parts in their hands, excellence of performance and interpretation could be safely taken for granted.  And the playing was excellent, with all three players aptly in scale with each other -- although the violin could get lost in the shuffle as the other two soloists and the orchestra got a little too boisterous at times.  All in all, though, a delightful performance of a concert rarity.

After the intermission, we got the Seventh Symphony.  Like all Beethoven, this is in danger of becoming hackneyed from overuse.  Edwin Outwater and the orchestra avoided that hazard, giving a crisp, clean performance that highlighted interesting features of the writing at many points.  The slow movement began very quietly indeed, forcing the audience to listen closely to what was happening.  The scherzo was nimble, quick but not overly quick, and the repeating trio was well contrasted. 

I just wish I could say the same for the finale.  Outwater succumbed, alas, to the temptation to join the "Beethoven sweepstakes" where the prize is the trophy for winning the "Anything you can play, I can play faster" race.  This contest has been a blot on numerous pianists playing Beethoven, and the same fate, alas, befell this concert.  There are a large number of very effective notes in the finale which deserve to be heard, and have a great deal to tell the listener, but we only could distinguish perhaps 60% of them.  The rest just vanished into a rushing torrent of blurry sound, exacerbated by the rich resonance of the Centre in the Square.  Sometimes it's better not to do your damnedest, if your next-to-damnedest would be more effective, certainly the case here.

Of course the audience leaped instantly to their feet at the end (another bugbear of mine) but then, if the finale of the 7th doesn't lift the audience out of their seats, something is seriously wrong!  For myself, I enjoyed the performance overall but wished I had actually heard all the notes Beethoven had written.