Lorin Maazel (1930-2014)

Former PSO conductor Lorin Maazel has passed away at the age of 84.

Some obituaries:

• New York Times
• The Trib
• The Post-Gazette

Maazel conducting Beethoven:

Completely Non-Political Blog Entry

I was lucky enough to attend (with some very nice seats, by the way) last night's performance of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

They performed first the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with violinist Sarah Chang. It was ably played - the second movement certainly - but the whole thing was inexplicably followed by a rousing though completely undeserved standing ovation from the crowd.

After intermission what followed was one of the masterworks of the symphonic repetoire, the 9th sympnony of Ludwig van Beethoven. After that piece finished, the standing-O absolutely necessary.

Here's the P-G's review from Andrew Druckenbrod. While he had to have seen Thursday's performance and my date and I saw Saturday's, I'd have to agree - mostly - with his review. One thing I do wholeheartedly agree with is this sentence:

If your list of 100 things to do before you die doesn't include it, squeeze the Ninth in.

As I said above I wasn't impressed with Chang. Don't get me wrong, in a million lifetimes I wouldn't be able to be anything near as good in anything, she must've been having a bad week. I wouldn't go so far as the Trib's Mark Kanny however:

Before the intermission and Beethoven's music, Sarah Chang played the Violin Concerto in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn. Although Chang received a strong standing ovation, I thought the performance was deplorable.

He was also at Thursday's performance. The performance we heard would have been something to write home for any immensely talented DMA candidate or even someone playing with, say, the Hartford Symphony. But this is Heinz Hall and that' the PSO. It should have been flawless and it just wasn't.

The Beethoven, however, was amazing. For those of you who don't know the piece (and by all that's holy, why the heck not?) it's the symphony where Beethoven added the chorus and soloists to the last movement. It was a very new thing in the 1820's when the piece was composed.

It's the piece where he set Shiller's Ode To Joy to music.

But it's so much more than that. The last movement (beginning ostensibly as a loose theme and variation form) progresses to a more an more discordant texture - it risks collapsing under it's own weight only to be saved by the baritone singing:

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenbollere!

Translation:

Oh friends, no more these sounds!
Let us sing songs that are more cheerful and full of joy!

Sometimes there are things that can't be expressed in just music - sometimes words are necessary. And for Beethoven the message of universal brotherhood was what needed to be expressed. The piece was so important it set the course of the rest of the 19th Century symphonic music. How do you compose anything after the 9th? Brahms, for instance, wouldn't complete a symphony until he was well into his early 40s (my current age, by the way. Ugh.). The influence of this piece was felt everywhere. It's echoes are heard still.

What a fucking masterpiece.