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Christ Church Cathedral
July 22, 2015
Beethoven's Fifth - do we need to add "symphony" today? certainly it was unnecessary when I was a child - has probably had more written about it than any other single piece of music.
Is the opening movement, as Anton Schindler claimed the composer told him, the sound of "fate knocking at the door"? Is it, as Nikolaus Harnoncourt believes, a description of an oppressive society? Or is it, as Arturo Toscanini once said (admittedly of the opening movement of the "Eroica") "simply Allegro con brio"?
Many of us would probably sympathise, if not completely agree, with E.M Forster's opinion in Howard's End that "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man"; and Leonard Bernstein's argument that the symphony is an exercise in compression is also highly persuasive.
Ultimately, though, the symphony must succeed as music (I'm clearly tending, much though it pains me, to Toscanini's point of view) and there can be no doubting that it does precisely that.
Even for one, like myself, who has heard the work uncountably many times over the last half-century and who rarely chooses to listen to it, for fear of ennui, Beethoven's Fifth invariably proves an engrossing and rewarding experience.
And so it did on Wednesday evening, as Michael Gormley and the Victoria Symphony closed their first cathedral concert in some years with a fine performance of the symphony.
While it would certainly be possible to cavil at certain elements of the performance - perhaps the opening movement could have had a little more fire, the opening of the scherzo a little more mystery - these would be minor criticisms to set beside the many outstanding attributes: the excellent overall sound, the well-chosen tempos, the carefully-managed dynamics of the slow movement, the energetic cello and bass outburst that is the trio, the resplendent trombones and thrilling piccolo of the finale.
The symphony was the culmination of a programme which opened with a lithe performance of the overture of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, which allowed the symphony's winds to shine.
Schubert's Overture in the Italian Style in D (to distinguish it from the C major overture) sounded oddly familiar in parts, until one realised that he had reused some of the music in his overture to Die Zauberharfe, which he later reused in toto as the overture to Rosamunde (and you thought the numbering of Schubert's symphonies was complicated). Gormley directed a lively and charming performance.
The Schubert was composed when he was a teenager, as was Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream (parenthetically, it is interesting that both the German - "Ein sommernachtstraum" - and French - "Le Songe d'une nuit d'été" - titles both miss the point that the dream is on midsummer's night). It was, however, some sixteen years later that he wrote his incidental music to the play in which, remarkably, he recaptures the feeling of that youthfully prodigious overture.
Coincidentally, one of my earliest memories of hearing the Victoria Symphony in the cathedral is of Michael Gormley directing the nocturne; on Tuesday I heard him direct it again, in a beautiful-sounding well-shaped performance, which succeeded a bouncy and suitably fairy-like scherzo.
Beethoven's overture to Coriolan is really a miniature tone poem (it normally lasts eight or nine minutes) of remarkable intensity. Tuesday's performance opened with fine attack before proceeding to a quite swift allegro, replete with excellent wind and brass detail. If the performance as a whole sounded a little soft-edged (like the symphony) I am happy to attribute this to the acoustic, rather than the playing.
A fine evening's music-making.
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