Beethoven 9 (getting something off my chest!)

We were playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony a few years ago at the NAC, and the Music Director was following the metronome markings provided in the Barenreiter edition by Jonathan Del Mar. This makes for a faster performance than I have ever heard or played. I like the symphony played faster overall and believe it is correct, but the difference is the Turkish March where it has been decided that Beethoven's nephew Karl, copied down the wrong note value so it is not a dotted quarter equals 84 but a dotted half note! Twice as fast as anyone knew! Typically, I think orchestras play this passage in the range of the dotted quarter at about 126-136. So the new tempo is 168…. and what was once a difficult passage has become extremely difficult, in fact we couldn’t hold it at that tempo especially in a large group of strings. Executing the already very tough string crossings and shifts is next to impossible. At that speed the charm, joy and humour of the entire march is gone and it is too quick to really feel the offbeat which is at the root of this ‘turkish-style” music. The greatness of the contrabassoon opening is wasted..utterly humourless. On the bright side, because our maestro stuck to the tempo markings, the last four pages of the symphony were quite playable which is a rare occurrence. Normally, conductors throw all caution to the wind and go nuts here.

I have argued for faster recitatives for years (ever since the Norrington recording in the 1980’s) and we are playing those pretty well; here, a dotted half equals 66 which is the same for the Presto at the outset. The feel is that each bar is in one, and I think it all hangs together much better this way. We didn’t quite manage the feel of one, because it was conducted in three for the most part. Despite this, I think we were playing closer to what Beethoven had envisioned rather than the slow, pontifical utterances one usually hears. So if you hear a mad scramble in the Turkish March, that is what is happening and you know which score the conductor has got his hands on. I recently heard a great recording of this with Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. I think the recits sounded the best I have heard them.