No Sweat: the Benign Beethoven

To the world, Beethoven is the monumental composer, the Titan, about whom nothing is life-size or mundane.

His representative creations--the symphonies (preferably odd-numbered), the late quartets and piano sonatas, etc.--are filled with heroic gestures, the giant torments and ecstasies of genius. The gentler side of Beethoven is a much harder sell.

There are instances of Beethoven-the-benign that don’t ring true, such as the Septet in E-flat for strings and winds, Opus 20, whose aggressively smiling countenance outlasts its welcome. Beethoven claimed that the extreme popularity of Opus 20 irked him, perhaps because it was taken up at the expense of compositions over which more blood was spilled.

The Septet is too artfully delivered by London’s Nash Ensemble to offset the more cloying conceits in the score. Less concentration on the perfectly rounded tone and perfectly shaped phrase would have enlivened the music considerably (Virgin Classics 91137).

The coupling, however, comes as close to a healthy, uncomplicated expression of hilarity as anything from Beethoven’s pen, his Trio in B-flat, Opus 11. The present performance is a delight, with Nash members Michael Collins (clarinet), Christopher van Kampen (cello) and Ian Brown (piano) both playing the notes and gleefully playing with them.

Beethoven’s arrangement (as Opus 38) for the same instruments--clarinet, cello, piano--of the Septet is an oddball delight, more interesting to these ears than the original, in large part because of the manic busy-ness of the pianist, who is forced to pick up much of the music seemingly lost with the departure of all those other instruments.

At a wonderfully brittle-sounding (unidentified) fortepiano, Stanley Hoogland plays with wit and agility in the company of his fellow members of Trio d’Amsterdam: Eric Hoeprich, the master of period clarinet, and cellist Tanya Tomkins.

The companion work (on Koch Classics 7015) from the same artists is Glinka’s operatically inspired “Trio Pathetique” of 1832, which takes on a particularly fragrant period charm on the old instruments employed (Koch 7015).

Beethoven’s Mass in C, Opus 86, lives in the immense shadow of the later Missa Solemnis in D. The Mass in C (1807) was commissioned by Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy (of Haydn fame). The Prince, commenting on its premiere in Eisenstadt, found the Mass “unbearably ridiculous” and said it caused him “anger and mortification.” He did not elucidate.

One wonders what could have offended the noble patron so. Succeeding generations have, if anything, found the 1807 Mass too mild, too self-contained to represent Beethoven at his best.

In the right hands, the Mass in C can be an intensely moving creation. And the right hands are those of Robert Shaw, who leads the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Telarc 80248) directly to the warmly beating heart of a score that has more in common with the songful late masses of Schubert than Beethoven’s own, hugely theatrical Missa Solemnis.

Shaw’s chorus is a marvel of flexibility and warmth of tone; the solo quartet, topped by soprano Henriette Schellenberg, does its work in becomingly modest, accomplished fashion, and the orchestra is as solidly assertive a presence as in the most fully realized of the conductor’s past recordings, those of the Verdi Requiem and Britten’s “War Requiem.”

Included as well are two brief Beethoven choral works, the “Elegiac Song” and the “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” cantata. Shaw and his chorus obviously do not side with the century and a half of adverse criticism that has relegated these works to oblivion. Altogether, a magnificent program.

The Atlantans’ way with the Mass in C seems even more impressive when comparing their version to the more prepossessing one originally recorded in 1970 by Carlo Maria Giulini with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, the latter trained by Bayreuth’s legendary Wilhelm Pitz.

Giulini treats the Mass in C as the monumental prelude to the Missa Solemnis, with which it shares this two-CD set (EMI/Angel 62693, mid-price). The earlier work moves weightily and majestically, with thick choral textures and vast dynamic contrasts.

The approach may work for the heaven-storming Missa Solemnis but robs the more humane Mass in C of its individuality--and its songfulness.