A Musical Homecoming
Myung-Whun Chung returns to Rome
to conduct Beethoven and Mahler,
heard by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
For Korean conductor
Myung-Whun Chung, a concert
with the Orchestra of
the National Academy of Santa Cecilia is a homecoming. He was the orchestra's
musical director
from 1997 to
2005
and very much loved by audiences.
He also left a major imprint in Florence
and Venice.
In early
May, he was awarded the Premio Abbiati by the Italian
National Association of Music Critics
for his masterly conducting of
Verdi's Simon
Boccanegra at the inauguration of La Fenice opera house's 2014-2015 season ('Back
in the Lagoon', 11 December 2014).
Thus, the huge Santa Cecilia concert hall
was sold out and filled in each category of seats on 9 May 2015 when he was
back for a concert of Beethoven
and Mahler.
The concert was repeated on
11 and 12 May. I attended the 9 May performance.
The concert included two rather different symphonies:
Beethoven's Symphony No
2 in D, Op 36, and Mahler's Symphony No 4 in G, for orchestra and soprano solo.
They have in common the fact they each belong to the composer's
initial set of symphonic
works. During his thirteen year tenure in Rome,
Chung conducted
Beethoven's Symphony No 2 twice. He was also the orchestra's first director to
conduct all Mahler's symphonic works. Thus, older people in
the audience
could compare the differences in style,
if any, as years passed by. Of course, they were comparisons filtered through memory. I
do not recall whether I heard Chung conducting Beethoven's Symphony No 2, but I
have a distinct recollection of his conducting Mahler's Symphony No 4 in 1999
and, thanks to my personal
computer, I also found the review I wrote at the time for an Italian daily
newspaper.
Beethoven's Symphony No 2, first performed on 5 April 1803, is clearly
set in the eighteenth century
pre-romantic period,
even though at that time, some contemporary
critics wrote that it sounded 'too modernist' (ie that there were too many
concessions to the then incoming Romantic
style). Chung emphasized the elegant
lace of the second movement (Larghetto)
almost to juxtapose it with the pure rhythm of
the Scherzo
(third movement) and with the concise fourth movement (Allegro
molto). Chung also provided depth
and breadth to the symphony by slightly slowing its tempos:
it lasted some forty five minutes instead of the more customary thirty five
minutes of most live and recorded performances.
The audience was enthralled.
The evening's
main piece was Mahler's Symphony No 4, however. As is well-known, this symphony
has the title Das
himmelische Leben ('The Celestial Life');
this is, in fact, the title of the lied sung by
the soprano in the fourth and last movement. Mahler had planned to include this
song in
Symphony No 3, but this previous symphony grew too long
(one-hundred-and-five minutes). Although Mahler had converted to the Roman Catholic Church in
1897 with great ostentation — only a means to become the General Director of
the Vienna State Opera
House — there is nothing religious in
the 'celestial life' mentioned in the song; it is merely a bucolic vision of
the peaceful Bavarian countryside.
The symphony is very introspective, especially when compared with
Symphony No 3, based on the awakening of nature
and landscape at
the beginning of
Summer.
Within this context, Sophie Karthäuser, a well-known lieder
specialist, was just perfect,
with a voice
like a nightingale.
However, I was in row 11 seat 19 and do not know whether, in the back rows of
the upper tier of the enormous Santa Cecilia auditorium,
the audience could appreciate her delicate singing.
Compared with the 1999 performance, Chung accentuated and delved into Mahler's
introspection. Nearly ten minutes of standing ovation followed the performance.
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