Beethoven's First Symphony introduced by Roger Norrington

[Seán]

When Beethoven wrote his Symphony No 1, he was young and at the height of his powers as both a pianist and a composer of chamber music, but he had also lived more than half his life. This symphony couldn’t have been written by Mozart, that’s for sure, but what about Haydn? I guess you’d always think another hand was at work. Harmonically, it’s a bit more stable than Haydn, a bit more Romantic, and in some ways more mischievous even, but it’s still a lot ‘safer’ than what Mahler or Elgar did in their first symphonies. Beethoven uses a standard, late-Haydn orchestra, full-sized, with clarinets but nothing radical or distinctive, such as contrabassoons, piccolos or trombones. Maybe he thought he’d carry on writing in this style, until deafness made him rethink his future.

The piece is dedicated to Baron van Swieten, prefect of the Imperial Library, Vienna, who’d caused a tremendous amount of music to be written, including Haydn’s The Creation and The Seasons and six symphonies by CPE Bach, whom Beethoven worshipped. There is a direct lineage from CPE to Beethoven, via Haydn.

Sometimes I’ll listen to a performance of a Beethoven symphony to hear if people are following the rules, the ‘road map’. I heard Mariss Jansons recently; even these top guys are taking note of what’s going on down in the early music ‘hobbit hole’. It’s very nice when people are generous like that. I resist use of the word ‘interpretation’. We must strive to get it right. Mostly people follow the metronome marks now, but they certainly didn’t before. The metronome was a new invention in Beethoven’s time, and we used to be taught (on absolutely no evidence) that his metronome was faulty. Beethoven would have seen a metronome moving, even if he couldn’t hear it, so his markings are both incredibly illuminating and liberating.

People can be shocked by our work – but it’s the speed at which horses gallop. The answer so often lies in dividing the bars into the correct number of beats. Know the rules: the quaver is never the unit of measure in Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven. It’s only part of the note.

Even before the Jonathan Del Mar editions (Bärenreiter) it was possible to get a perfectly good performance if you knew how to read the code – getting the speeds, note lengths and phrasing right. You don’t need a ‘concept’. There was once a tradition of ‘just playing’ this music, but two strands emerged – Toscanini versus Furtwängler. I wasn’t trying to be different; I was trying to get the music right – and it’s exciting when that becomes mainstream.

We thought no one had done it before, but, as I subsequently discovered, René Leibowitz was using the metronome markings back in the 1950s. He was a pioneer like Pierre Boulez at Bayreuth. It’s wonderful when something ‘crazy’ becomes the norm – especially when it sounds so good.

The first movement starts in the wrong key, not arriving in C for around 20 bars. It was meant to startle people. Beethoven was a bit of a bear in the salons of Vienna, and there is a famous story of an occasion when he was asked to play something: he sat down at the piano, thought for a moment, put his arms down right across the keyboard, then stalked out. He never quite stopped doing that.

The Beethoven symphonies don’t have genuinely ‘slow’ movements. Classical works generally don’t. I remember playing Symphony No 2 under a famous German conductor who said, ‘You have to suffer to play Beethoven slow movements.’ The slow movement in the First Symphony can sometimes sound ponderous, but it’s marked Andante cantabile con moto, so the emphasis must be on singing.

The third movement is marked Menuetto, but look at the metronome marking. Maybe this was a joke? To a German, a menuetto would have been something quite stately, but Beethoven here is suggesting something more like an allegretto or even presto; and there are precedents, in Mozart and the late-Haydn string quartets.

There is a very Haydnesque-joke-opening to the finale. It sounds as if it is going to be very gloomy and tragic, then it runs away and becomes totally brilliant. Wonderful stuff. People think of Beethoven as being dramatic, exciting, wild – but, when you listen, the harmonies and the orchestration are so incredibly beautiful all the time. Suffering is completely out of place, except perhaps in the Third Symphony.

Wit is the subject matter of the Classical period, so the metronome markings come as no surprise to those of us who know the Baroque. This is like sitting at a sparkling dinner table, listening to a group of very intelligent people. It’s a marvellous idea. The idea of the dance is central and note length is crucial, so Beethoven was very, very careful about marking both staccato and non-staccato notes.

Beethoven never stopped being a Classical composer. He was a breeches man, not a trousers man. He’s not an early Wagner; if anything, he’s a late Haydn. Always he had that late-18th-century grace. He stumbled upon Romanticism. When he composed this symphony, he had a foot in each of two centuries. He lays down his colours: ‘This is what I can do with a symphony…but in a couple of years I’ll show you what I can really do.’

[fergus]

I have always felt that Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 was firmly rooted in the Classical tradition, the late Classical tradition, and that it was a work that was a natural evolution from the late works of both Haydn and Mozart. I agree that neither of these two composers could have composed the work but, for me, the musical sound world is not that far removed from the London symphonies of Haydn and Mozart’s Jupiter. Beethoven took up the Classical baton and ran with it and his Symphony No. 1 was obviously his first tentative steps along his planned symphonic road. True, Beethoven was no innovator when it came to musical form or orchestral scoring; his strengths lay in his musical content and vision; case in point is his very first opening symphonic statement. How different and shocking must it have been for an audience to hear the tonal arguments of the opening of bars of Beethoven's’ first symphony before it all “settled down”?

The one thing that I could never understand was the non observance Beethoven’s metronome markings. He wrote them down for a reason; he wanted his works to be played at a precise tempo. How many lethargic and anemic performances have we heard in the past? The metronome was a relatively new invention at the time and it gave interpreters specific guidelines to help with the overall presentation of his work unlike the somewhat vague tempi indicators [allegro, andante, vivace etc.] of the Baroque era, whose true performance practice had probably been lost, forgotten or modified at that point. The tempo of a work is, after all, what gives it its horizontal movement or musical drive if you will and helps to set the tone and drama of a piece.

Norrington always got poor press for some reason but I have always liked his interpretations. I gave his Beethoven 1 another listen after reading the above article. I only have his original version with the London Classical Players. The performance is a very good one I think, well balanced and the tempi give it a certain poise and elegance appropriate to its Classical heritage particularly in the Andante. One thing that I like in the Minuet movement is the use of relatively heavy timpani which should sound incongruous but works very well; the Trio section is a also quite beguiling and certainly adds the requisite contrast. The Finale is where the tempi really come into their own infusing the music with an electric charge and strong forward momentum, drive and excitement.

[Seán]

Thanks for your considered response Fergus. I am very fond of Beethoven's First symphony and can understand why, at the time, it was a significant, yet natural, step foreword in symphonic music.

I don't have the Norrington set, perhaps I should get it. I have listened to the The London Classical Players performance on Youtube and it is a lovely performance, I must say I really like it.




Herbert Blomstedt's recording with the Staatskapelle Dresden has long been my favourite, in light of what I have read here I should revisit all recordings in my collection once again and see if that still holds true.

[fergus]

I am very fond of Beethoven's First symphony and can understand why, at the time, it was a significant, yet natural, step foreword in symphonic music....
Herbert Blomstedt's recording with the Staatskapelle Dresden has long been my favourite, in light of what I have read here I should revisit all recordings in my collection once again and see if that still holds true.

It is never a bad thing to re-evaluate ans reassess works and performances like this. That is what the old Listening Projects were very good for. I have found that there are two approaches by conductors to this work; one branch sees it as a late Classical work while the other branch sees it as a early Romantic work. Both obviously require different approaches and it depends upon how one sees the work onself as to which approach one prefers obviously. I do not have the Blomstedt cycle so I cannot comment but I would be interested in your thoughts after any re-evaluation.