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The Beethoven/Schubert Round: The Gluttony Continues

Posted by Christy Mackintosh
Saturday, 4 September 2010

Norman Fischer explicates the work of Schubert

I have officially overdosed on Beethoven. We’re talking about the guy whose pivotal voice, as John Largess pointed out on Wednesday morning, got us stylistically from Haydn to 20th Century in roughly 120 years: a radical shift. Which is fitting, for today is a pivotal day in the competition: it’s the last chance for our nine quartets to impress the jury before three are chosen for tomorrow’s finals.

It has been a marathon day in a marathon week of chamber music. Eight of the nine quartets chose Beethoven over Schubert, which Tanglewood’s director of chamber music, Norman Fischer, explained this morning, isn’t all that surprising.

“There’s a certainty to Beethoven’s voice that can easily be translated into a compelling performance.” Schubert, he said, is more difficult to pull off in a competitive environment. “He’s full of ambiguity, vulnerability, intangibility… you can’t ever know what [the music] is going to do or where it’s going to go when you feel it deeply.”

I was feeling it, that’s for sure, when the Atrium Quartet finished its crowd-pleasing performance of Death and the Maiden. The goose bumps followed me all the way into the dining room, where our table of fans from Seattle and Edmonton re-fuelled in preparation for the afternoon’s triple-threat trilogy of Beethoven.

Can you believe that by the end of today our audience in residence will have listened to roughly 27 hours of music since Monday? And that’s with a day off! It might not be the quickest moving audience the Eric Harvie Theatre has ever seen, but listening to six brilliant hours of Beethoven in a day takes serious stamina. The hard core among us continue to follow along with scores purchased in the lobby. There are a few nodding heads, accompanied by an occasional rumble of breath from someone who has succumbed to the deadly combination of mid-day fatigue and too much food at Vistas.

Just an aside – Barry says no clapping between movements, but surely clapping is no more disruptive than the cacophony of coughing and clearing of throats that erupts each time the musicians put down their bows. I am siding with Rob Kapilow on that one!

Intermission drives us out of the darkened theatre and we emerge, squinty-eyed, into the September sun. Someone is loudly wielding a critique of an anonymous quartet’s tuning – not that I had noticed any tonal mishaps, but some of these audience members, like bats, have supersonic hearing. And they have a quick and insightful answer to any question you can think to ask them. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself among them, give it a try. There’s only one day left.

Listen to Norman Fischer’s lecture on iTunes (54 minutes)

Our intrepid BISQC blogger, Christy Mackintosh, is a music lover and freelance writer who lives and works in Banff. She holds degrees in piano performance and English literature, is a contributor to Calgary’s Fast Forward Weekly, has written features for The Globe and Mail, and is working on her first book. She recently participated in The Banff Centre’s Literary Journalism program, where (it could happen to you!) she got a little too used to the buffet at Vistas. She looks forward to feasting of all kinds throughout the exciting week ahead.

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