SYMPHONY CONCERTS, February 24 and 25. At The City Hall. CPO conducted by Victor Yampolsky, soloist Francois du Toit. Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos. DEON IRISH reviews
TO MARK the occasion of his 50th birthday, Francois du Toit, Associate Professor of Piano and Head of Practical Studies in UCT’s South African College of Music, undertook what to pianists is akin to climbing Everest – the performance of all five Beethoven concertos in two concerts on successive nights.
The feat has been performed in Cape Town before: Anton Nel was heard over two nights in 2005 and, some years earlier Lionel Bowman had done something similar, once in Cape Town (although not on successive nights) and then again in Stellenbosch, but over three nights.)
The Beethoven concertos as a collection form an interesting and quite disparate series of works. There exists an additional, far earlier work, the 1784 E flat concerto, which dates from his Bonn years but which is of slight importance. He had also started work on a sixth concerto in D major during 1815, which never progressed beyond the sketches which remain.
The five major works in the repertoire range from the very classical Haydn-inspired concerto of 1795 (No 2 in B flat, actually the first in chronological order) to the magisterial Emperor of 1809 (No 5 in E flat). In between come the technically assured C major, the C minor concerto (the only one in that mode) of the Eroica years and the intensely personal G major concerto of 1805.
The result is that, although the five works are written by the same composer for the same solo instrument, the character of each assumes so different a hue as to be almost as disparate as works by five different composers. And yet not: for what proved as fascinating in this dual concert as had been the case with Nel’s accounts a decade ago, was the recognition of the continuing constancy of artistic impulse despite the changing shapes, textures and forms. It put one in mind of the bud of what will be a gorgeous flower, in which all of the elements are present in compact and undeveloped form, and which the addition of the waters of time will cause to bloom into an expansive beauty.
The first hurdle for the soloist to overcome is the sheer physicality involved in this undertaking. Apart from the first concerto, each succeeding concerto demands an increasing degree of athleticism in the delivering of the thousands of notes (someone calculated some 85 000 in all!) Through endless variations of finger movements, hand positioning, forearm leverage and the maintenance of core stability. Oh – and add in pedalling to the muscular mix.
The next hurdle is the muscle memory required for all of this to work smoothly. The myriad scales passages, arpeggios, chord combinations and the like leave no time to think: it is the repetitive practising that allows the automatic delivery of the necessary movements with lightning speed. Hard enough for one major work: an enormous undertaking for five.
Then comes the musical input. The works have very different musical emphases, as the composer’s musical personality developed and as the artistic understanding flowered. So the treatment of quite similar passage work in, say the B flat and E flat concertos, are inherently different, since the same string of notes are performing different formal and musical functions.
It would be futile to review du Toit’s account of each concerto. He brought to the collective task an honesty of purpose and a clarity of intent that kept one engrossed through what might, in other hands, have been a rather wearying exercise.
I will not pretend that all was faultless excellence: the opening work of the five suffered from a certain instability of tempo which could be attributed to the sheer import of the occasion on the performer; the exposed opening of the G major seemed a little imprecise and the final rondo a little to viva for comfort (although the celebrated central movement was exemplary.)
Minor cavils. Against that can be placed a quite marvellous reading of the B flat (my least favourite of the five), an exhilarating and seemingly faultless account of the C minor’s symphonic aspirations; and a truly magisterial performance of the last, great fifth concerto, so aptly nicknamed the Emperor.
The orchestra provided splendid support throughout with Yampolsky shaping the accompaniment in a manner ever mindful of pianistic requirements.
The players joined the audience in the lengthy ovations which greeted the conclusion of both performances - and, on the final night added a full orchestral Happy Birthday, more than enthusiastically sung by capacity audience.