Last night's performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was an unmitigated train wreck; a catastrophically uninspired, discombobulated performance of Beethoven's masterpiece, which attained a level of flatness previously unknown to me in this work.
Contrary to recent tradition, the Beethoven's Ninth performances this year are taking place just before and just after New Year's, rather than on New Year's Eve itself. There were performances scheduled for December 28th and 29th, and January 2nd and 4th (plus an untuxed concert on January 3rd). The two main performances in January are part of the Masterworks series, while the two in December are billed as "Holiday Special" concerts. This will be relevant later.
Also contrary to expectations, Ludovic Morlot was not the conductor for last night's concert. Instead we were graced with Carlos Kalmar, the music director of the Oregon Symphony. In addition to the absence of Morlot, we noticed that most of the key principal players in the orchestra had taken leave for the evening. These included but were not limited to Efe Baltacigil, Alexander Velinzon, Susan Gulkis Assadi, Ben Hausmann, Christopher Sereque and of course Demarre McGill, who is absent from this entire season.
The first 'half' of the program consisted of Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Carlos Kalmar proved to be a mediocre leader from the start, and the orchestra proved to be rather uninspired. But during intermission we didn't yet lose all hope for the Beethoven, because there was the possibility that the missing principals would return for the second half, or that the orchestra was simply bored by the Brahms and that they would give a much more involved performance for the Beethoven.
Nevertheless, due to the quality of the first half, expectations were rather low for the Beethoven symphony. But not nearly low enough.
As intermission came to a close, the choir took their seats behind the orchestra, and then Kalmar came out to lead the symphony. Our metaphorical train was off the rails from the very first beat. The opening notes in the winds and lower strings came in almost as an accident, and the repeated notes in the violas were incredibly slow and uncertain. The opening motive in the violins was clumsy, unmusical and out of sync. It was such a disaster that within seconds of the opening I was bored and couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over.
There was absolutely no unity in the orchestra, either within sections or between sections. There was no inspiration in the playing, and it seemed like there were about five different interpretations of the piece fighting for dominance throughout the orchestra. It wasn't uncommon for the descending motive in the violins to come 'too soon' due to how slow the sextuplets in the lower strings were being played, and then the lower strings would have to catch up quickly. Kalmar incompetently made sweeping gestures and shallow facial expressions throughout this abomination, and utterly failed to bring anything out of the orchestra.
Even as the first movement reached loud, climactic sections, there remained a flatness and an utter absence of drive. There was no coherent pulse, ever. No pulse, no drive; just a progression of sounds, like a dismal funeral of suicidal note heads marching inevitably to the end of the piece.
I can remember at most one or two moments in the first movement where the sound produced by the orchestra became more than the sum of its parts. In those brief, fleeting moments one was reminded of what a great orchestra sounds like under great leadership, bringing music to life, speaking it with a clear voice. But these moments were few and far between, like the occasional glimpse of the stars one might get while in Mordor, in those rare instances when the poisonous fume allows for a small break in its impenetrable shroud.
It's hard to describe how incompetent this performance was, because it's even hard to comprehend that a performance that incompetent was possible. No one element that contributed to the catastrophe would have made it such if everything else was properly set. The absence of principal musicians and the presence of mediocre subs was certainly a big blow, but under a great conductor, while the sound would have still been less refined than the actual Seattle Symphony, it could have nevertheless been an energetic and captivating performance. But we had a combination of a handful of missing key players, a probable lack of rehearsal time, and a conductor whose unusual interpretation sparked an apparent civil war within the orchestra, with some of the veteran players trying to keep alive some sense of semblance of the work, and others trying to comprehend what Kalmar was asking of them.
By the time they arrived at the coda of the first movement, it felt as though nothing had been played and nothing had been expressed throughout the previous fifteen minutes; just a meaningless progression of notes. The coda followed suit, with the chilling and brilliant music being played as if it were a bowl of dried up granola eaten with water on a morning when you're late for work.
If you're familiar with this symphony you can probably already predict the fugal catastrophe that followed in the second movement. Displaying no increased sense of unity or coherence relative to the first movement, the orchestra plundered on like an oblivious child, shredding the second movement to the same degree as they did the first. Even Stephen Bryant, a very respectable second violinist, lost his place at one point during the second movement, revealing clearer than ever that in addition to all the other unfortunate circumstances which coalesced around this performance, the players themselves were likely in a "we know this piece so well, we don't have to think about it" mindset.
And as the musicians among you are well aware, there is nothing more endless, more sinfully boring or sleep-inducing, than a long, slow movement performed devoid of any inspiration, pulse or unity. Thus we were cursed with the third movement of the symphony, which practically lie on the stage below us no different than if we had just been looking at a score of the work sitting by itself on the stage for fifteen minutes.
Before the third movement had begun the soloists came on stage and took their seats on either side of our conductor, to be ready for the fourth movement which would come with no pause after the third.
The opening blast and ensuing frenzy of the fourth movement was again weak and uninspired. This monstrosity did not improve at all throughout the evening. Movement after movement it was as if not a soul on stage cared at all about anything. And when the soloists began singing, they proved to be what you would expect of community singers soloing with a University symphony. They weren't bad, but they weren't of a professional level. They reminded me of what I might see in a small community like that of Orcas Island where I grew up, which is wonderful for that setting, but not what you hope for when you're at the Seattle Symphony.
The choir was the only reasonable part of the performance. Because they are a volunteer chorus and only perform a few concerts a year, they are always very much into the music and giving it their all, and so it was from them that we heard the first energized notes of the evening. They also benefited from the skilled instruction of their regular director Joseph Crnko, who did masterful work with them on the Verdi Requiem last month.
When the calamity finally came to an end following a desperate last few measures which seemed to cry out "wait! We still have a few seconds left to come to life before it's over!" the audience erupted in applause in typical Seattle style, but it was not what it should have been. On a subconscious level they could tell something was wrong and that the performance was a failure. When the choir was asked to stand up the applause noticeably increased.
I have a couple thoughts to share in general about this situation.
First of all, I don't know why Carlos Kalmar was chosen to conduct these concerts, and I don't know where all the principal musicians are. But I do know that the Symphony administration is aware that the vast majority of the audience "won't be able to tell the difference," especially for these first two performances which are the special holiday performances, where a large portion of the audience are people who almost never go to the Symphony. Perhaps they figured that by the time they get to the subscription concerts in January, it'll sound a little bit more passable.
But the reason I put "won't be able to tell the difference" in quotes is because the audience can tell the difference, they just don't know it. They don't know how much more captivated and inspired they would have been had it been a great performance. They go away thinking "that was nice, but classical music is kind of boring, like I thought." So the administration is right that the public won't go away thinking that they've been ripped off, but they also won't go away inspired to return; and hence this kind of cost-cutting thinking shoots themselves in the foot, and shoots classical music in the foot.
Think about it. A dry, dead, uninspired performance, and a hall full of people who think that that's all that classical music can be. That's much more harmful to the reputation of classical music than if the audience had simply gone away saying "that was a ripoff, they didn't perform that very well."
Currently I have one ticket for the last performance, on January 4th, and I'm contemplating whether or not to go, or whether I should exchange it out. I'm kind of curious if it will improve at all by then, but aside from possibly having a slightly improved agreement on tempos throughout the orchestra, I don't see it magically turning into a worthwhile performance between now and then.
Better luck next time!
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