Roll Over Beethoven

Pardon me, boy -- is this the philharmonic station?

One of the things that should endear Ludwig van Beethoven to all of us who live in this latter day egalitarian culture was his insistence upon being treated as an equal by his "betters," meaning the nobility. Even though he may not have granted that courtesy to others, and even though he was decidedly upwardly mobile himself, still he chafed at the tradition of patronage that decreed musicians had to arrive through the servants' entrance, even if they were the greatest composers of their day.

I like the story that the "van" in his name, a pretension to noble birth, was added by Beethoven himself. It is also said that when his brother added the sobriquet "Land-owner" to his card, Lugwig countered by having some of his own printed with "Brain-owner." If invited to a party as a guest who was expected to perform, he refused; but if not expected, he would perform, like it or not.

I was thinking about him today, as I do almost every weekday, because when I disembark at the Brickell Metrorail station I am invariably greeted with the strains of the first movement to the Fifth Symphony. Due to the efforts of local Beethoven enthusiasts, including the local homeowners association and at least one County Commissioner, this recording has been playing between the security and train announcements for several years now. You might think that it would get tiresome after all that time, or that the endless repetition -- never a full performance, or any of the other three movements -- would have turned the immortal symphony into mindless Muzak by now. But so far it has never failed to strike me as new and vigorous every time.

Surely this is a testament to what an enduring composition this piece is. In a recent biography, Beethoven: The Universal Composer, author Edmund Morris relates a story about being on the campus of Harvard University in the middle of winter. It was the first day the sun showed itself after a week or more of blizzardly darkness. As the snow lit up, someone opened a dormitory window and placed speakers on the sill to blare out the triumphant final movement of -- what else? -- Beethoven's Fifth. Supposedly everyone who was close enough to hear it stopped in their tracks and listened as the music gave perfect expression to their joy at the return of the light.

So I often still find myself with an additional spring in my step as I leave the station, and find myself humming the other movements as I walk to my office -- the lyrically swinging second, the waltzing scherzo that imitates the opening theme of the first movement, and then the victorious fanfare of the finale that emerges from the misty end of the scherzo like a sun cutting through morning fog.

There's another irony about the playing of the Fifth at the metro station, though. At the same time they were memorializing Beethoven, the Brickell Homeowners Association, fancying themselves loftier than the rabble who must ride the bus, engaged in a successful lobbying campaign to nix the rental of some space at their train station to Greyhound. Now the poor slobs who drift into town that way must remain content to disembark among some warehouses near the airport from which it is a long hike to anywhere.

Poor Ludwig, who insisted in his Ninth symphony that "all men will be brothers" and that "this kiss is for all the world," must be rolling over in his grave.

Let's Hear It For Cleveland

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Saturday evening we had the great pleasure and privilege of watching and listening as conductor Kurt Masur whipped the Cleveland Orchestra into as spirited a rendition of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony as I have ever heard.

The Cleveland is in the midst of its winter residency in Miami, an annual treat that gives us some consolation over our loss of the Florida Philharmonic, which did not survive long enough to move into the new home we built for them. Sitting through this all-Beethoven program I could not help recalling the summer Beethoven festivals that director James Judd used to lavish on us. I'll certainly never forget the finale of that performance of the Ninth that caused the audience to leap to its feet and utter a sound like the crowd at a basketball game whose team had just come from behind to win with a three-point shot at the buzzer.

But that was then. Now we have to be content with a few performances per year of a world class orchestra appearing with a variety of guest conductors. The German-born Masur, now past 80, may have been among the most elderly people in the room, but he was the only one of us who stood on his feet though the whole performance, and showed himself still full of energy and the ability to convey it to us through the orchestra.

First for a warmup was the Leonore Overture No. 3, which demonstrated old Ludwig's marvelous blending of orchestral textures and the Cleveland's stellar ability to bring them out -- including the use of an off-stage trumpet as a special effect for the fanfare that appears in a couple of places.

Then Canadian pianist Louis Lortie turned in a slick performance of the First Piano Concerto, full of liquid arpeggios and clear percussion. This first foray into a keyboard concerto by Beethoven is interesting because the first two movements -- especially the gentle and lyrical second -- could easily be mistaken for Mozart. But then the third begins and there's no doubt we're in the hands of someone new. There is even a playful jazzy figure perhaps not heard again until the time of Gershwin or Latin American dance music.

And finally the Seventh Symphony. What can I say? It's only the second time I've heard it live (the first was by the still-existing Miami Symphony, which did a fine job and really brought out the strong bass lines), but I've heard many other recorded performances. My recent favorite was by the Minnesota Orchestra with Osmo Vanska conducting, and they are said to be doing some of the best Beethoven right now. What I liked about Vanska's interpretation was the way they got the rhythm and tempo right in the final movement, which can easily turn stodgy if taken too slowly.

Well, slowness was no problem for Masur and the Cleveland. From the downbeat they were off to the races, running lickety split for the finish line. The effect was electric, and reminded me that one contemporary critic of Beethoven complained that his music "exceeded the range of the human nervous system." Well of course it did -- they'd never heard anything like that before.

Lucky for us, two hundred years later we can hear it still.