Romantic passion and restraint made for an exciting opening of the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra’s 24th season at the Red Deer College Arts Centre on Saturday.
Most of the passion in the Master Works concert flowed from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major, while the restraint came in the form of Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A Minor.
The difference between the two compositions can be likened to being seated at a dinner party between a reticent person who barely makes eye contact and an effusive someone who gets in your face and gestures with his hands as he speaks.
Schumann’s only cello concerto was delivered as a marvel of constraint by soloist Philip Hansen. The piece sounded so measured, yet complicated emotions were simmering under the surface.
Hansen, a principal cellist for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, is a stunning player, who delivers all the nuances and subtleties of this difficult concerto.
Conductor Claude Lapalme described him as producing a “silken” sound, which is perfect for this gently undulating piece with occasional emotional plateaus.
Performing on a 16th-century cello, Hansen created an interesting interplay with the orchestra, which heightening the concerto’s romantic mood.
Schumann wrote his only cello concerto shortly before the onset of a serious mental illness, which led to a suicide attempt, a stay at a sanitorium, and ultimately, his inability to recognize his own family members.
But such tragedies weren’t foreshadowed by this pleasing work, which was purposely written without pauses between movements because the composer detested premature outbursts of applause.
Although Schumann’s concerto sounds restrained to modern ears, it was thought to have more emotional range than any cello piece up to that time and has influenced many other works.
By comparison, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, written when the German composer was only 30, seems a virtual hot-house of passionate, overflowing emotions.
The work, performed on Saturday to commemorate Lapalme’s 20th anniversary with the RDSO (it was the first piece he conducted in Red Deer), is a bit of a puzzle.
Lapalme said the upbeat symphony starts off on a “wrong” chord. Its second slow movement is not that slow, and its third “minuet” movement is not really a minuet but a scherzo, (or quick, humorous movement). The up-shot is that Beethoven liked to mix it up and sound original.
The exuberant opening is underscored by a sense of tension, which ratchets up the emotional feeling. This ebbs in the second movement, only to gradually build up again in the third and fourth.
Beethoven apparently enjoyed toying with audience expectations, building to a big kettle-drum pounding crescendo in the final movement — only to back off several times before finally delivering the big finale.
Lapalme called this a wink from the composer to us.
Who knew that Beethoven — that most formidable presence — actually had a sense of fun?
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com