Gerald Carpenter: Chamber Orchestra Takes On Beethoven

The Santa Barbara ensemble will perform Tuesday evening at the Lobero

By Gerald Carpenter, Noozhawk Contributor | Published on 03.01.2010

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For a fallback position, it’s pretty hard to top Ludwig van Beethoven, as many of our local music providers seem to have discovered in recent months. His reputation among musicians is almost as high as that of Johann Sebastian Bach, and audiences don’t need to be told how great he is — they can feel their hearts beating faster in real time.

Beethoven
Beethoven, as we see, was not always the scowling titan as he is usually portrayed.

So, whatever the occasion — and no obvious anniversary of birth, death or publication immediately presents itself — we in the auditorium can only rejoice at the decision of the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra to make its upcoming concert, at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Lobero Theatre, an all-Beethoven one.

The program, conducted by Maestro Heiichiro Ohyama, will feature dashing young pianist Adam Neiman as soloist in the Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 19, followed by the Symphony No. 7 in A-Major, Opus 92.

I apologize for reminding my readers, once again, that in all likelihood, the Concerto No. 2 was written before the Concerto No. 1. With Joseph Haydn or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, it wouldn’t really matter, but Beethoven’s art evolved so dramatically that if you’re trying to trace the development of his compositional style, you might find the order of publication somewhat confusing.

No. 2 is very 18th century, even Italianate, in its irresistible fluency. There is nothing very Promethean about it. With No. 1, he is definitely beginning to feel his oats and to kick over the traces laid down by his predecessors. His stride more determined, he seems to have no time for the delightful dances of No. 2. A new urgency pushes him forward and doesn’t really stop pushing until the late quartets. If we remove the “Emperor” Concerto from the equation, then the nimble, dancing No. 2 is my favorite of all his piano concertos.

Despite them all being published in the order of composition, Beethoven’s nine symphonies, on the other hand, do not offer anything like a linear progression. After the lofty grandeur of the “Eroica,” full of contemporary references, he more or less invented neo-classicism with the elegant Mendelssohnian Fourth. After the gorgeous sprawling nature-painting of the “Pastoral,” he produced the dynamic abstractions, the absolute music, of the Seventh.

No. 7 was very much in vogue during my youth, and my wife and I proceeded to the altar to the sublime strains of the second movement. Franz Schubert clearly used it as a model for his “Great C” Symphony, but lacked the discipline and logic to carry it off. None of Beethoven’s symphonies really resemble the others, and the Seventh least of all. It is an extraordinary work.

Tickets to Tuesday’s concert are available at the Lobero box office at 33 E. Canon Perdido St. in downtown Santa Barbara or 805.963.0761, or click here to purchase them online.

— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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