Authenticating Beethoven on Six CDs

The period-performance movement has come a long way in a very short time in terms of the music it considers suitable for “authentic” treatment, i.e., using the relatively unsophisticated instruments and applying what (little) we know of the performance practices of the long-dead composers’ time to the most accurate editions of the scores that scholarship is able to provide.

A decade ago, only Baroque music (the more lightly scored the better) was considered suitable for such antiquarian exploration. Now we have gotten to the point where Beethoven--the biggest as well as the most intimate--is not only fair but favored game.

For example, a set of six CDs from the Smithsonian Collection of Recordings (to order, write Smithsonian, P.O. Box 23345, Washington, D.C. 20026) titled “Beethoven --The Early Years through the ‘Eroica’ ” includes the two Opus 5 Sonatas for Fortepiano and Cello, performed by James Weaver and Kenneth Slowik; the first three symphonies, with the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jaap Schroder; and the six quartets of Opus 18 from the Smithson String Quartet, of which Schroder is the leader.

All the performances are of a high order, although the symphonies are more soft-grained in their string sound than other period editions and less explosive in temperament than those of Roger Norrington and his London Classical Players on Angel.

Opus 18 as played by the Smithson Quartet is a perfect reflection of the stylistic borderland the scores occupy, their Classical framework constantly being shattered by the uniquely dramatic Beethovenisms--Romantic harbingers--and executed with a splendid combination of rhythmic intensity and lyric grace by Schroder and colleagues.

The honor, if such it can be called, of being first on the market with all nine Beethoven symphonies on period instruments goes to the Hanover Band (Nimbus 5144/48, 5 CDs), directed in most instances by Roy Goodman, from the concertmaster’s chair.

These are make-do performances, falling short of the best in the field in respect to ensemble neatness and textural clarity. And one would be remiss in not mentioning that in the finale of the Ninth Symphony, bass Michael George, who does not have the easiest time negotiating the “‘O Freunde” recitative as notated, compounds his difficulties with some convoluting--and stylistically questionable--ornamentation.

The Hanover Band and Oslo Cathedral Choir (whose singing is the best thing about the Nimbus Beethoven Ninth) on the other hand present what is easily the most agile and, to these ears, most thrilling interpretation of the Beethoven “Missa Solemnis” on recordings (Nimbus 5109).

The conductor here is Terje Kvam, the Oslo choirmaster, who drives the music smartly rather than frenetically, keeping it in shape without subverting its dramatic scope or emotional wallop one bit. Beethoven’s often-excoriated textural density and long-windedness are not present. Which means that the fault was never the composer’s in the first place.

Frans Bruggen directs his Amsterdam-based Orchestra of the 18th Century in an “Eroica” Symphony (Philips 422 052) that one might call traditional were it not for the old instruments employed: traditional in the best sense, in that it is sonorous, mobile and cohesive.

The “Pastorale” Symphony (with the “Egmont” and “Coriolan” overtures on Oiseau-Lyre 421 416) is the most fully realized component thus far of the ongoing Beethoven symphony cycle from the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood’s direction. The major failing of the set to date has been the wind-up quality of its slow movements, music where a conductor validates his importance. This “Pastorale” is, then, of a piece, the “Scene by the Brook” a gentle, elegant, almost dreamy interlude amid all that rustic energy.

Whereas the Smithsonian’s Weaver-Slowik collaboration is all easygoing charm in Beethoven’s Opus 5, the British team of fortepianist Melvyn Tan and cellist Anthony Pleeth sees that music in slightly more rugged terms while adding the three remaining and much bigger sonatas of Opus 69 and Opus 102, and playing them with fiery virtuosity (Hyperion 66281/2, two individual CDs).