For his third and last weekend at Tanglewood this summer, Boston Symphony’s Music Director, Andris Nelsons, put together a programme of three performances including a rarely heard full cycle of Beethoven’s piano concertos with Paul Lewis as soloist (that was supposed to be performed in 2020 during Beethoven’s anniversary year.) At the same time, making a statement, he prefaced each of these performances with a newly commissioned symphonic work by an American female composer.
Friday night’s world premiere was by Julia Adolphe, a young composer whose successes span multiple classical genres. As with her other poetically entitled works, we should not read too much into the Makeshift Castle metaphor. The comment Adolphe made in her succinct introductory notes – “the composition juxtaposes fragility of life and resilience of human spirit” – should also be considered as general guidance and not as a followable programmatic description. Beautifully and ingenuously orchestrated, occasionally sounding as a film noir movie score, the work introduces the listener to a musical universe whose segments sound in turn menacing, even apocalyptical and eerie. There is intensity and concern but little joy in this music slowly descending into silence. Among individual instruments, the trumpet (an excellent Thomas Rolfs) seemed to be privileged. Nevertheless, there were numerous subtle exchanges involving woodwinds, harp, percussion, or piano, alternating with forceful moments of tutti playing. All in all, a brief and elaborate score worth worth listening again. (The BSO has scheduled performances during the next season at Boston’s Symphony Hall.)
It is regrettable that Beethoven’s five piano concertos were not played in the order they were created; as a series, they eloquently demonstrate the evolution of the composer’s style in the first part of his career. Nevertheless, that would have likely implied that the Second (actually, the first composed) and the Third would not have been performed in the same evening – a lost opportunity for listeners to witness how Lewis and Nelsons underlined links between the two, such as the introduction of the “wrong” key in the lively and fun Rondos, before the tonic is quickly reinforced, or the wonderful legatos in the slow movements.
The understanding between pianist and conductor, who have been collaborating for many years, since Nelsons was at the helm of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, was almost faultless. They presented this familiar music without any effort to be intentionally “different” just for the sake of it. Even if there were audible Mozartian reminiscences in the Piano Concerto no. 2 (mainly of the darker nuances in the Concerto in E flat major, KV 282) Mozart’s shadow was not over-emphasised. Neither were any virtuosic pre-Romantic hints in the Piano Concerto no. 3. Lewis’ “conversations” with individual members of a lean ensemble (with six cellos and four basses) were carefully designed and not at all declamatory. He had no problem retreating into the background and letting woodwinds take the main role. The piano was never dictating an outcome; every phrase was the result of a well-thought agreement.
Lewis’ playing is imbued with a quest for restrained perfectionism that recalls the pianism of Alfred Brendel, his one-time mentor. His ability to change his articulation, to switch from assertiveness to dreamy delicacy continues to amaze. His 50th birthday was earlier this year. For one of the greatest interpreters of Beethoven’s music active today, the time has perhaps come to attempt a new traversal of the 32 sonatas.
