Khatia Buniatishvili talks to Tim Woodall ahead of the BBT concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 4th May 2012.

I am very happy that Kalevi Aho was willing to write this for me. Still a lot of people don’t know the beauty of this instrument and this piece gives a great opportunity to show the trombone in all ways. There is not much left that is possible on a trombone that is not somehow appearing in this piece!

It is absolutely a great and beautiful piece, and a fantastic contribution to the repertoire for trombone. Very demanding for the soloist and for the orchestra, but the technical demands are not just to show off or to try to be interesting, it is really in favour of the music. The piece is in four movements, a very classical form: slow, fast, slow, fast.

The slow movements are actually very romantic and show the lyrical and singing abilities of the trombone. They are both built around the same chord that is first played by me alone, using double tones: I sing and play at the same time through the trombone. After that the chord is taken by the orchestra and develops in different ways in the first and third movement.

The fast movements are quite groovy and virtuosic. Using a lot of special techniques like flutter tongue, double and triple tongueing, fast vibrato, glissando etc… on the edge of the impossible, they show the spectacular side of the trombone with a lot of help of the three percussion players who really set the groove.

You can find a few excerpts from the world premiere on my pages on the BBT website.

But I feel I should also make a small point. This Trust is not based around competition – they give a varying number of Awards/Fellowships per year, dependant on the quality of the nominees. Having spent even a small amount of time on the competition circuit, I have found the time spent in preparation and on that stage has not been a particularly happy or rewarding one – even when it results in first prize. Competitions in music undermine the foundation and purpose of our art. The Borletti-Buitoni Trust does not inanely pit musician against musician. It founds itself on the bare minimum of competitive elements, and for this I am immensely grateful.

Although I found “my” composer for a bassoon concerto, Sebastian Fagerlund, quite quickly (thanks to Robert von Bahr from the BIS record label), I still made a sort of quest of meeting him for the first time. The best possibility to meet him turned out to be in the middle of my holiday plans with undefined destinations, so amongst other exotic destinations, I decided to withstand the temptation of another fantastic time-travel to springtime in New Zealand like I had last year. The destination was soon defined to Stockholm, and since I was determined to have cycling holidays, I took the relative cold for granted, and took my bike and tent on the plane to Gothenburg on the 20th of october.

On the way to Stockholm (colder than expected!)

From Gothenburg to Stockholm it would be 700 kilometers of cycling, avoiding the highways. My appointment with Sebastian and Rob Suff from BIS was on the 28th…  straight from the airport I cycled 60 kilometers full of optimism, but I have to admit it was a little colder then I expected and I found ice on my tent after the first night. The trip was beautiful though, and without problems, apart from a broken chain just when I was in the middle of the woods during sunset.

One of the most special meetings (apart from the one in Stockholm, and many meetings with deer in the woods that my iphone GPS software confidently sent me through) was in a hostel near Trosa that turned out to be a filmstudio, Lagnö Studios. The filmmaker and owner of the hostel was Per Carlesson, and he personally showed me his latest short movie: I believe 7 minutes, which was by far the longest in his career. I was very impressed and also amused by his short masterpieces, that was also very effective when it comes to the use of music.

I arrived 2 days early in Stockholm where I spent a nice time with my dear friend and double bass player Rick Stotijn.

Then finally I met with Sebastian and it turned out that Robert von Bahr had definitely recognized the preferences in music that we have in common. It was a very special afternoon.  We spoke a lot about music and art in general. I asked him what he thought about programme music, and I think we agreed on the point that it’s often not very interesting to make music as “realistic” as possible. On the other hand I was curious what he would say about my idea that when music is abstract, it can be a shame when the listener has totally different asociations with the music then the composer. I gave him the following example about my experience that morning:

I was listening to his composition called Isola, on a CD of his music alongside the clarinet concerto. The clarinet concerto I loved immediately. The piece Isola I had listened only two times and had not felt the same strong connection to it that I had so immediately with the clarinet concerto: I found it more abstract and wanted to listen more often to see if I would understand it better. While I was listening again to Isola the morning of the meeting, I Iearned about the death of two ex-colleagues from the Rotterdam Philharmonic. This unexpected terrible news made me incredibly sad. I kept listening to the music and felt that this music was very much connected to mortality. I suddenly felt very intense about this music and it had a strange influence on my mood: on the one hand it intensified my sadness and on the other hand it had a comforting effect. I told Sebastian about this experience and I suggested that  this might be a typical example of different associations between composer and listener, because of course I didn’t expect the background of that piece could actually have a connection to my feelings of that morning. Then he asked curiously “did you read the liner notes?” and I honestly told him I had not. Then he said: ”I ask this, because this music is definitely based on the theme of death”. “It ‘s about a very peaceful looking island where terrible deadly events had taken place in the past”…

Bram, Sebastian Fagerlund and Rob Suff

Since then Sebastian and I have stayed in touch through a special webpage where I post recordings that might interest him, including the backgrounds that these pieces have for me.

Rob Suff from BIS joined us later the same day.  I was very impressed with the idealism of the BIS label that I could see in him and of course already had heard in many of their CDs. The concerto by Sebastian will be recorded for the BIS label in 2014/2015 and Rob had already interested a few orchestras in Scandinavia for performance of the new concerto. I flew back home, but it definitely felt just like the beginning of a new journey… so; to be continued!

www.bramvansambeek.com

Up until recently, I’d always found op.130 (and its last movement op.133) the hardest Beethoven quartet to understand. It’s the first, 3^rd, 4^th and last movements (the Grosse Fugue) that were particularly enigmatic to me. I didn’t understand the connections between movements, the tonality relationships, what the characters are, and the meaning of this 15 minute relentless fugue that ends it. The fugue seemed an intellectual tour de force to me, but without the incredible depth of emotion there is in all of Beethoven’s other music. However I was convinced that this must be from my own lack of understanding rather than Beethoven’s fault! We’ve just had a week of rehearsals to really get to grips with it, so this was the perfect opportunity for me to immerse myself in the op.130 world and find my way into it….

18/10/11

This is a monumental piece! We spent a lot of time playing through movements today, as we usually do when we’re starting a new piece. Sometimes words get in the way when we’re just feeling our way into the music. We found it difficult to find a comfortable tempo in the third movement (Poco Scherzoso, Andante con moto ma non troppo). With such a lengthy and specific title, Beethoven must have meant something quite precise. The Scherzoso feeling needs a certain poise which can easily become heavy, but on the other hand as soon as it’s that little bit too flowing it risks loosing its character. And to top it all up there are some incredibly awkward passages for the cello which have to sound effortless…

I’m as puzzled by the Grosse Fugue as before but I did feel a sense of being a part of something larger than life playing it.

19/10/11

Today there was a small breakthrough for me with the 4th movement- “Alla Danza tedesca” (As a german dance) Beethoven’s incredibly specific hairpins and and rhythmic notation are very complicated and can feel restrictive. If you really try to do what he asks, it can easily sound over complicated and unnatural. We tried thinking of the hairpins more emotionally, and Marie mentioned that the first gesture could be really tender. Somehow, this made everything fall into place! And for the first time I felt that I understood what that movement is about. It’s such a very delicate mixture of tenderness, smiles, simplicity, refinement, slightly folk-like heaviness in the middle section, and a certain carefree feel that never quite takes over the mood. I also think the movement’s key of G major has a kind of ease to it, compared to the more earthy home key of B flat or the D flat major of the previous movement. And the huge distance in tonality with that previous movement makes this one all the more special and unexpected, as if some weight had suddenly been lifted off the music.

20/10/11

We spent a good part of the rehearsal bent over our scores trying to figure out what’s going on in the Grosse Fugue. Then, one has to figure out how to make it understandable to the audience, which is the really hard part because every theme and counter theme is a vital part of the fugue, as important as each other. To make matters worse, most of it is marked relentlessly fortissimo, which doesn’t lend itself very well to subtleties of balancing. We’ve been experimenting with having very differentiated sounds, articulations and emotions for the different themes. Not yet sure if it’s working very well. There was a debate about the character of the pianissimo middle section. Martin thought that because of the crazy first part that comes before this section, the music can’t be absolutely still and disconnected, it should carry some underlying unrest, while Don thought this would best be achieved with the reappearance of the main theme in crotchets being kind of glassy and almost without vibrato. I, on the other hand, didn’t agree with Don about the “glassy” sound, and I thought that we should resist the urge to phrase too much or open up in this section despite the incredible beauty of the music, so that it feels suspended and other worldly. We’ll probably come back to it a few times before we reach an agreement…

21/10/11

First movement. It’s so much about abrupt contrasts, both of tempo and of dynamic. The piano subitos, where the music becomes suddenly and unexpectedly quiet, often after a crescendo, are especially hard to do. You need both a really good bow control and a clear image in your head of what you want it to sound like- the latter being in itself a challenge because the abruptness of the subito makes it unnatural. Daniel Barenboim compares a piano subito to a sudden stop at the edge of a precipice and talks very literally about the courage needed for it. (Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society, Daniel Barenboim and Edward W. Said)

Cavatina. It’s a fine balance to find between how emotional it is and at the same time how “wise”. Martin is the wisdom advocate, while us other three tend to steer more easily towards the emotional side of things! Of course, everyone agrees about the almost unbearable anguish, yet barely a tentative whisper, of the middle section, marked “beklemmt” (anguished, or oppressed). I’m not finding an unusual enough sound to portray this. I feel the need to forget how to play the violin for this passage, how does one one translate into sounds someone’s innermost unspeakable fears?

Grosse Fugue. We played it through and realised how important it is to “practise” playing it through, because it’s a huge chunk of music for the brain to encompass, and it also needs an unusual amount of stamina.

22/10/11

I’ve just made an exciting discovery! In this piece, all the adjacent movements are linked to one another by a note, whether it’s a tonality or a single note. So the first movement is in B flat (major) and the second also in B flat (minor). The last note of the second movement (B flat) also starts the third movement. The last note of the 3^rd movement is a D (flat) and the first note of the fourth is a D (natural). The last note of the 4th, first note of the 5^th, last note of the 5^th, first note of the last are all G. This is such an interesting way of unifying an extremely varied work; Beethoven is taking us through different worlds and actually showing us the narrow path from one into the next! In terms of performing, it will be important to keep the time between movements as short as possible so that the audience can hear those connections.

23/10/11

One of the challenges of op.130 is organising the rehearsals so that there is time for everything! We’re feeling this keenly as we’ve just been working on op.135, equally a master piece and difficult to play, but about 20 mins shorter… So we’ve been having to make a kind of plan every day for how long to spend on each movement, so that we don’t end up with a wonderful first movement but not having touched, say, the Grosse Fugue! It’s a struggle to stick to it, as there is always more to be rehearsed or talked about. And it can also be a cause of tensions amongst us, each person always feels that the point they need to make is important enough to get a little behind schedule…

More on the Grosse Fugue:

In his “Histoire du quatuor”, Bernard Fournier points out that Beethoven has taken a form that is traditionally an “intellectual” one, where emotions usually take second place in favour of the structure, and turned it around to become one of the most emotionally charged movements ever written. This is what I didn’t really see before. The sheer physicality of the music, not to speak of the heaven-reaching middle section, are such powerful emotional statements that I almost can’t believe I ever doubted it. The two quavers of the same pitch under a slur that run almost throughout the fugue and have sparked so much debate as to what Beethoven meant by them are a clue: they are a very unusual marking and we’ve come to feel (as Peter Cropper, see in his interview “what would you ask Beethoven if he were alive?”) that Beethoven wouldn’t have used it unless it was for something highly meaningful and emotional, so that each of these gestures is filled with the effort of sustaining the note until the very end.

24/10/11

We love playing the second movement. It is such a stroke of genius writing and is really satisfying as it’s so well written for the instruments. I always get a burst of adrenalin in the middle section, its virtuosity is so intoxicating that I have to force myself to keep a cool head if I want to make it to the end of the movement.

The 4^th movement is still elusive, it always takes us a few tries until we get the right feel for it unanimously.

Second meno mosso in the Fugue. Martin feels very strongly how insistent his part is, and I feel that the way it comes across is slowing the tempo down. This kind of thing, where we don’t actually disagree with each other in how we want the music to sound, but only in how we think it’s coming out, will probably be easier to assess when we record ourselves in the concert – we usually do this when we’re playing pieces that are new to us, as a working tool.

25/10/11 First performance, Buxton

Don and Martin came out saying it was the most physically demanding experience they’ve ever had playing a concert. As for me, I’m converted! The journey that one goes through when performing this piece is quite unique. It visits such extremely different worlds in the different movements (more unrelated than in any of his other quartets in terms of motivic and harmonic connections or organic development), but the way into each is somehow always a surprisingly natural progression from the previous- as if Beethoven had read into some of human nature’s most hidden universal truths and put them into music (also see rehearsal on 22/10/10).

The Cavatina was an intensely emotional moment for me, Beethoven letting us in on something so fragile and so completely at the core of his being. It was overwhelming to then go into the Grosse Fugue, yet it made complete sense, as if all the hushed oppression in the Cavatina finally found its sublimation in the Fugue. And it felt like anything less monumental and out of the ordinary would have been a let down after the Cavatina (although I am curious to experience playing op.130 next year with the other finale, which Beethoven wrote for it a year later. I remember Peter Cropper once saying that he found playing the Cavatina before one or the other of the finales completely different experiences)

The fugue is a huge journey in itself. The way in which the “main” theme- the first one that one hears, and which underpins the whole fugue- struggles with the other main theme and the different versions of itself almost all the way through, in a kind of titanic battle, and finally rises triumphantly in the coda, and the fact that it takes 15 mins of the most intense, sometimes apocalyptic music to reach that conclusion, really took on a new dimension through performing the work. I now think that the end of the fugue, where through the reconciliation of the 2 themes Beethoven spectacularly resolves all the tensions and struggles the music has undergone and seems to rally the whole world to his side with ferocious idealism, is one of the most glorious moments in all of music, and one of the most exhilarating things I have ever played.

01/11/10,  2^nd performance, Thurso

Tonight we got a bit lost in the Fugue! That can often happen when you’ve played something for the first time and it hasn’t gone too badly, so you let your guard down a bit… It wasn’t anything too dramatic, one of those instances where someone goes wrong (in this case, me!) and someone else adapts to it (here, Don) but by the time he did, I’d already realised my mistake and adapted back. In the meantime, Martin and Marie would have been frantically trying to decide who to follow, probably each making a different decision… The result was a few very wobbly lines, which to us seemed to last agonising hours, but which actually were probably (thankfully!) only a matter of a few seconds.

Although it is a huge work and there are so many difficulties- technically, musically, physically, stamina-wise…- there is something about how much Beethoven gives to me as a performer which actually creates new energy. As it’s being used up, it’s at the same time being fed back into me through the music, in a kind of self perpetuating way. I wouldn’t exactly say I’d be ready to play it all again immediately at the end (!), but I don’t feel as drained as I would expect after such an exhausting piece. He must have been an incredibly generous and embracing person.

This was the first concert of a Scottish tour on which we’re playing op.130 nine times, and some more after that. We feel very lucky to be able to do this, what a great experience. And after spending hours in the rehearsal room, the best way for us to grow with a piece is through performing it a lot. Maybe we’ll see some of you there!

Sara

Follow the Elias String Quartet as they prepare to perform the complete cycle of Beethoven quartets at www.thebeethovenproject.com 

Wait a minute… Concertos for Recorder? Is this a recorder player suffering from ‘arrangitis’ [1]? Well, interestingly enough most of the harpsichord concertos by Bach are in fact arrangements made by and for himself as a soloist.[2] The concertos were performed by the collegium musicum in informal settings like Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig. In those works, Bach elegantly transformed instrumental and vocal movements from cantatas into movements for his own use. He also used movements from now lost concertos for unknown instruments most likely from his period in Cöthen. The lack of information about the pieces Bach used for his reworkings has led to a lot of speculation. The concerto BWV 1055 (known as the harpsichord concerto BWV 1057) is claimed by oboists[3] to be for the oboe d’amore. However, substantial evidence to support this has not been found. Bach has never written similar demanding material for this instrument in his cantatas, making it hard to believe that it was ever intended for that instrument. All movements of concerto BWV 1053 can be traced back to aria’s and sinfonie from cantatas but the original tonality and instrumentation remains in shadows. And BWV 1059, known in its most common disguise as an oboe concerto, survives as a harpsichord concerto only in the first 20 bars.

But why then play them on the recorder?

Well, first of all because, just like Bach, I love to have great music for my own instrument. Apart from that, Bach as a composer, was very familiar with the recorder using it extensively in numerous cantatas, two concertos for multiple instruments[4] and the Matthew Passion (very briefly though). In addition, it is widely assumed that many of his orchestral and chamber works have been lost. So what if Bach had a recorder player available which ignited his fantasy so much as to make a version for recorder?[5] This hypothesis has been taken one step further by Thiemo Wind in producing a fully new concerto based on cantata movements with a likely instrumental origin or a real potential for successful reworking. Who said musicology was boring?

The small sample on BBT’s YouTube channel here is a recording the BBT made during the ceremonial concert for the Dutch Music Prize. It is an arrangement of Bach’s ornamental organ choral BWV 622.

Listen to excerpts from the Bach Concertos CD on the BBT website.

[1] Arran’gitis (noun) chronic disease. Patients suffering from this syndrome are not able to control the urge to arrange every single piece they can lay their hands on. Although single cases have been reported as to have miraculously cured from the syndrome, most never fully recover from the symptoms.

[2] Bach single-handedly invented the form of Harpsichord Concerto, in a similar way Handel invented the Organ Concerto. Not surprising Handel also composed them to be played by himself.

[3] And the Neue Bach Ausgabe, Bärenreiter.

[4] Of which one is actually another reworking by Bach for his own instrument. I am talking about his reworking of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G for solo violin, two recorders and orchestra into the Concerto for harpsichord, two recorders in F BWV 1057.

[5] Not only that, brief browsing over the internet showed that musicians recorded concerto versions for oboe, oboe d’amore, traverso, bassoon, trumpet, piano, organ, harpsichord (BWV 1059), viola but not for recorder!

Facyl (Festival Internacional de las Artes de Castilla y Leon) has a contemporary feel with Calixto Beito, the artistic director, giving particular emphasis to theatre and street performance.  Not the normal environment for a Beethoven string quartet cycle, but a couple of factors made it fit – the venue wasn’t a traditional concert hall but a very beautiful art deco museum, The Casa Lis, complete with a striking stain-glass ceiling and balconies looking down onto the main hall of the gallery where the performances took place. Also the audiences consisted of a wide variety of people, from teenagers in skinny jeans to more traditional classical concert-goers to breast-feeding mothers. Towards the end of the week, the audience had grown so much that people were sprawled out on the floor as more traditional seating options had run out. We responded to these unusual elements very positively, and felt particularly inspired to make Beethoven’s quartets as relevant to today’s world as the break-dancing workshops taking place on the street outside.

We have another complete Beethoven cycle in August as part of the Edinburgh Festivities, this time spread out over a fortnight in late-night concerts in the historic Greyfriars Kirk. We feel very fortunate to have these opportunities so early in our career, and look forward to continuing our infinitely rewarding journey into this most extraordinary music.

Oliver Heath

The Heath Quartet play the Beethoven quartet cycle at the Edinburgh Fringe, 12-26 August 2011.  Full details here

Playing with Gordan became absolutely magical in the double concerto for recorder and violin that was especially written for the occasion by Matijs de Roo, a very talented Dutch composer. I remember one instance where in the second rehearsal Gordan asked Matijs to explain a little about the piece. Until then we mainly had been busy with playing the notes but when Matijs explained that he wrote the piece in a period of mourning over the death of his father, we all felt what was to be done with the notes. It suddenly made one thing very clear for all of us: the need of artists of our time expressing timeless emotions in the music of today. And when that is done with a combination of honesty and craftsmanship, the music’s relevance will become timeless by consequence.

The subject of tempi in Beethoven’s quartets is a controversial one. These pieces have throughout the years entered the subconscious of professional musicians, amateurs and audience, and the tradition, handed down by the great quartets of yesteryear, has become a norm against which all subsequent performances are judged. The recordings and performances we grew up with and the interpretive choices the artists made have become an integral part of our outlook on the masterworks. And the choice of tempo in music that so many people dearly love can arouse strong feelings: When the Kolisch Quartet performed Beethoven’s opus 95 quartet in Paris according to the indicated metronome markings, presumably in the second quarter of the last century, a fistfight ensued.

Unbeknownst to many, Beethoven himself very clearly indicated what tempi he envisioned using metronome indications that for many years seem to have been forgotten or disregarded, mainly because of their controversial nature. Even today, many look at them with suspicion, or simply ignore them. For many years they were absent from the editions altogether. In the recent Henle edition they were nowhere to be found in the parts (but in the preface to the score) and in the completely fresh Bärenreiter edition they are at least present in the parts, although hidden as a footnote at the bottom of the page.

The metronome as we know it was invented by the Dutch mechanic Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel shortly after 1800, but the construction was copied by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel who patented it. A lawsuit ensued, Winkel won, but it was too late: Mälzel’s name had already become associated with the metronome. Beethoven had already become acquainted to the gifted inventor Mälzel when he asked him to construct a hearing aid for him. When Mälzel constructed a mechanical musical instrument, the Panharmonicon, Beethoven agreed to compose a special piece for it: “Wellington’s Victory”. Beethoven greeted the invention of the Mälzel metronome with great enthusiasm: he had for a growing amount of time been regarding the traditional tempo indications as insufficient:

“I have long been thinking of abandoning these nonsensical terms allegro, andante, adagio, presto, and Mälzel’s metronome gives us the best opportunity to do so. I give you my word here and now that I will never use them again in any of my new compositions.” (Letter to Hofrat von Mosel, 1817)

Shortly after, he published a declaration jointly with Salieri starting “Mälzel’s metronome is here!”, paying tribute to the invention. He went on to publish, in instalments, metronome markings for some of his most popular works, and ended up having provided tempo indications for some 150 of his works. Interestingly he never provided tempi for the late string quartets, although there is evidence he intended to.

During the 19th century it seems to have been increasingly difficult to get hold of the metronome indications. They had been regarded as controversial from the outset, and with the editors resistance to publishing them and the complete change in musical aesthetics of the latter part of the Romantic era, they fell into oblivion.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a growing number of performers started to take notice of them again. Rudolf Kolisch (1896–1978) of Kolisch Quartet fame and a pupil of Schönberg became one of their strongest proponents and Boulez’s teacher René Leibowitz (1913–1972) became the first conductor to perform Beethoven’s symphonies according to his metronome markings. In 1942 Kolisch gave the talk “Tempo and Character in Beethoven’s music” in New York, which was subsequently published the same year, and it was to play an important part in the debate on the tempi in Beethoven’s music that seems to have been ongoing ever since.

Myths and Truths

A number of myths surround the metronome markings of Beethoven, and many myths need to be put to rest, but also some truths acknowledged:

1. Beethoven’s metronome was faulty.

It still exists and is accurate.

2. Beethoven was deaf when he wrote the indications.

The story of Beethoven’s deafness is a rather more complicated issue than popularly assumed, and hopefully a subject of a future post on this blog. His deafness was increasing during his last 25 years, but he seems to have become totally deaf only by the end. The Mälzel metronome is in any case a mechanical one with the “arm” clearly visible, so tempo is also visually perceived.

3. Beethoven fell out with Mälzel over his metronome.

Untrue. Beethoven and Mälzel fell out in 1814 regarding the performance rights for “Wellington’s Victory”. Beethoven filed a legal complaint that was settled in court by a compromise. They were reconciled, and Beethoven went on to pay tribute to the metronome publicly.

4. Beethoven’s secretary Schindler refuted Beethoven’s adherence to metronome markings.

True, but Beethoven’s biographer and secretary Anton Schindler’s (1795–1864) writings have since been discredited. He falsified facts and exaggerated his close relation to the composer. “[V]irtually nothing he has recorded can be relied on unless it is supported by other evidence”, The Beethoven Compendium (1991) states. There are a number of famous Beethoven quotes originating from Schindler that tend to crop up in texts about the composer and these need to be questioned.

5. The pieces become unplayable and/or frantic if performed according to the metronome markings.

Hard, yes, but hardly unplayable. The subject of the frantic character is of course to some extent subjective.

Beethoven’s music had, already in his days, a revolutionary quality: extreme contrasts, sudden accents, quick dynamic shifts. These characteristics can go surprisingly well with the furious tempo Beethoven sometimes asks for.

6. The tempo Beethoven heard in his head is not what he really wanted.

This is the hardest one. A number of composers have been reported as actually playing their music at a slightly different speed than initially asked for in their metronome markings, and the actual performance tempo often tends to get a bit slower. Certainly some composers of the late romantic era are reported to have been free with tempi, and regarded the metronome markings mostly as a recommendation or a “starting tempo”. Then again, others (Bartók for instance) are specific about tempo in the most meticulous way, also between minute changes within a movement.

What we do know is that Beethoven regarded the tempi in his music as something primary in regard to the desired musical expression. Often, when he had not personally attended a certain concert, tempo was the first thing he inquired about.

“The metronome markings [for the Missa Solemnis] will be sent to you very soon. Do wait for them. In our century, such markings are certainly necessary; moreover I have received letters from Berlin informing me that the first performance of the [ninth] Symphony met with enthusiastic applause, which I ascribe largely to the metronome markings…” (Letter to Schott, Dedember 18, 1826)

he writes rather humbly.  There is furthermore not any convincing evidence for any insensitivity on his part in adhering to his own metronome markings, so we must assume that they at least give a very clear indication of his intentions. And as Kolisch writes: “what really matters is the extent of the deviation.”

7. The size of the concert venues, the instruments and the playing styles of Beethoven’s day invite for a slightly quicker pace than with modern circumstances.

This seems to me true to a certain extent. The concert halls today are generally bigger and more resonant, and the players in Beethoven’s day used little vibrato and played on gut strings that reacts quicker than modern ones.

From a performer’s perspective, and a little bit of humility

A metronome marking gives us a basic indication of the composer’s intention regarding the speed and to a certain extent character of a piece. But within the piece there are of course innumerable deviations from that speed, which is not to be seen as a straight-jacket.

It seems that we have come to the conclusion not to deviate too much from the intentions of Beethoven at this early stage of our exploration of the quartets. Some of them have so far seemed just right and some a little fast. After having performed some of the movements for some time attempting to follow Beethoven’s intentions regarding speed, it seems like the choice of tempo has settled after a while at a pace that feels natural. When we have sensed that a certain theme does not work musically, the metronome marking has sometimes helped us back on track. The first movement of opus 18:6 seems very fast indeed, and when we performed it a few years ago, we settled at a slower speed, but it is going to be interesting how we feel about it when we come back to it as part of The Beethoven Project.

We have been asked a few times about our choice of tempo in the last movement of opus 59:3, the famous fugue movement: Beethoven gives a break-neck speed metronome indication and we still haven’t performed it at quite his speed, but close. It seems fast to many, but it also gives an edge of the seat, furious, even shocking quality to the music. The contrast to the unusually slow preceding minuet is tremendous. It seems to me that he knew what he was doing.

It is early days in our learning process of these quartets, and I am sure much will happen in the course of the project. Perhaps I will write a blog post in the future completely refuting the previous text!

Martin Saving

Sources (amongst others): “Integral Interpretation: Introductory Notes to Beethoven, Kolisch and the Question of the Metronome”, Thomas Y. Levin. “Tempo and Character in Beethoven’s Music”, Rudolf Kolisch. (The Musical Quarterly, 1993, Volume 77, Nos 1 & 2) “Classical & Romantic  Performance Practice 1750-1900”, Clive Brown. “The Beethoven Quartet Companion”, ed.Robert Winter, Robert Martin. I have not provided footnotes: Any questions regarding the details please contact us through the website.

Recommended reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/14/beethoven

and this is an abstract of a longer article taking Beethoven into the space age:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1971JSV….17..323T

Share the Elias String Quartet’s journey at www.thebeethovenproject.com

BEETHOVEN’S STRING QUARTETS are universally acknowledged as the most profound group of pieces in Western music. I played each quartet at least 200 times over thirty years and never tired  of them. There was always some new element that was uncovered in each performance. Quartets are a conversation between 4 players sometimes agreeing and sometimes arguing in the sense that we sometimes play the same tune together but we could equally barge in with another idea.

If you are not familiar with the quartet repertoire, then I suggest you first listen to one of the great Haydn quartets, Op.76 No,1 in G. Haydn was the ‘inventor’ of string quartets, [ his first really great ones Op.20 written in 1720] and the opening of this quartet gives you an insight in to the way the medium functions. After a call to attention the cellist asks the other three “What about this for an idea, would you like to play with me?” The others join in, in turn, with an appropriate response and the original idea is developed until  everyone is playing together. It is the journey of this development that makes this music so intriguing.

Haydn and Mozart were the two composers that established the string quartet and it is their legacy that Beethoven inherited. We know for instance that he copied out Mozart’s Quartet K.464 in A, in order to understand how quartets should be written. There were no music conservatories in those days. If you don’t know Mozart’s music well, I suggest you listen to the quartet K 575 in D. This has a very different sonority from previous quartets as each instrument is more soloistic,without losing the continuous sense of conversation and development of the themes between each of the players.

Beethoven is known as the greatest symphonist but it is very important to remember that if he had died at 31 like Schubert, he would only have published his first symphony plus his first two piano concertos. Everything else was chamber music including many piano sonatas, violin sonatas, cello sonatas and string trios. These last were very important to his future fluency in quartet wtiting. The five published between 1796 and 1798 are unjustly neglected as they contain some wonderful ideas and incredibly beautiful music. The first, Op.3 is like a dedication to Mozart as it is modelled on his great Divertimento in Eb K.563.

Beethoven waited until 1800 to publish his first six quartets together as Op. 18. These remarkable pieces represent the end of his first period . Beethoven’s compositions fit very neatly in to three periods the other two known as the middle and late. These early quartets are often overlooked due to the extraordinary music that is going to appear later. However one gets glimpses of the future in several of the movements. Each one has its own individual style revolving around Beethovens’s choice of key which can lead to brightness or tension or humour, even graciousness. The first, Op. 18 No 1 is the opposite of the Haydn I mentioned earlier in that it starts with a six note motif played in unison. It is then fragmented, as each instrument gives its own take on this motif. You never know who is going to play it next! In the slow movement, surely one of the most deeply felt movements from the 18th century, Beethoven tells us that he had in mind the vault scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The idea of having a programmatic background recurs again in the slow movements of Op. 59 No. 1 and Op.132 and the last movement of Op.135. I think it gives us great insight in to listening to all the other movements as for me Beethoven is always painting a vivid picture of either joy, anxiety, sadness, frustration, fear  or something humorous. Take the last two movements of Op. 18 No.6. In the Scherzo the listener has no idea what the rhythm is or even how many beats there are in a bar, but one is immediately aware of the conflict and fun between the performers. In the last movement titled ‘La Malinconia’, Beethoven tells the players that it must be played with the utmost delicacy. This sort of instruction is so unusual that we realise that he has found a sound world so totally strange, that he is worried that nobody will understand the emotional content. This is an early glimpse of the depth of feeling that Beethoven will share with us later on in his life.