Tradition and progress: Caroline Shaw’s Punctum and two Beethoven concertos at Tanglewood

Ten years separate Beethoven’s First and Third Piano Concertos. Performing them on the same program chronicles how far the composer progressed in his handling of the genre and the role of the soloist. The First is, for the most part, traditional, beginning with a jaunty march, progressing through a subdued, contemplative slow movement to conclude with a prolonged, Haydenesque tease. Though the orchestra takes the lead, the piano doesn’t always follow. The Fourth speaks in a much different, unexpected, and often darker, more assertive voice with the piano the prime mover, coaxing and contending with the orchestra.

At times, Paul Lewis’ fingers seemed to transmit their intentions to the keyboard without making contact. There was no sense of anything being struck, let alone touched. The notes flowed liquid and clear. No matter how softly he played (and he played extremely softly at times, particularly at the beginning of the Fourth), they gleamed with the same light. The best pianists tame their instrument’s percussive nature, transforming it into something approximating the human voice. In the First, Lewis’ piano sang with the clarity and dexterity of a coloratura; the Fourth featured a whole cast of characters. What had been showy virtuosity before here took on more colors, depth and weight. The more whimsical aspects of both concertos were underplayed, however,  with the third movement of the First unfortunately finding both Lewis and Nelsons a bit too poker-faced to fully evoke its playful spirit. Still, these performances were a tour de force for all concerned with the Boston Symphony Orchestra responding to Lewis’ dynamic finesse with a palette of its own. 

Caroline Shaw’s Punctum deals with genre and tradition in a postmodern mode, yet mirrors the process of development encapsulated in Beethoven’s two concertos. It began as a string quartet in 2010, achieving its final form after revisions in 2013. The BSO commissioned a string orchestra version which received its world premiere with this performance. Shaw describes this short piece as “essentially an exercise in nostalgia” inspired by a passage about a photo of his mother aged five in Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida and his general concept of the “unexpected” in photography. Barthes’ contemplation of his mother in the photo alters his sense of his own history. In Shaw’s case the “photo” is Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Contemplating it and the classical tradition it embodies gives Shaw a fresh perspective and alters her sense of what it is to be a composer. However, the piece opens with a chord that sounds suspiciously like the one from The Beatles’ A Day in the Life and progresses in fragmentary fashion as if the various gestures were found objects, parts of a fractured whole which is not immediately identifiable. Nothing fully develops; everything defies any impetus to coalesce until a hymnodic melody from the first two violins briefly rises from fray near the end. Eventually everything begins to slow and soften until the piece closes on two quiet plucks from the violins. It’s a thought-provoking, subtle work which begs for and deserves another listen.