Notes from the 2020 Eilat Chamber Music Festival - several events marking 250 years of Beethoven's birth

Busch Trio:Matthieu van Bellen,Omri Epstein,Ori Epstein (Maxim Reider)

As at many musical events worldwide, the 15th Eilat Chamber Music Festival, taking place at the Dan Eilat Hotel from January 22nd - 25th 2020, celebrated 250 years of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth with works by- or inspired by the illustrious composer figuring in several of the festival concerts. I wish to mention some of the events that celebrated Beethoven’s importance to the world of music.

 

No new faces to the Eilat Chamber Music Festival, the members of the Busch Trio (UK) - Mathieu van Bellen (violin), Ori Epstein (‘cello) and Omri Epstein (piano) - met in London when studying at the Royal College of Music and formed an inseparable friendship. The trio, formed in 2012, takes its name from the violin van Bellen plays (Adolf Busch’s 1783 Guadagnini violin) but it also takes inspiration from Adolf Busch himself. The two concerts the trio performed included the two Op.70 Trios. Both trios were composed during Beethoven's stay at Countess Marie von Erdödy's estate; both are dedicated to her in gratitude for her hospitality. The Busch Trio artists’ performance of Opus 70 No.2 in E-flat major, a work generally relaxed, compassionate and luxuriant, displayed Beethoven’s capricious temperament, their playing of the work’s “outbursts” impactful but never rough-edged, always leading the listener back to expression of the composer’s vulnerability. Their playing of the Largo was fresh, its naive moments juxtaposed with candid, daring tutti as they probed the movement’s Viennese melodiousness cell by cell. As to the Presto movement, we heard vehement, grandiosely played sections alongside charming reticence, the movement’s tension every bit as present under the surface of its gentler moments, with crescendi building up to culminate in utter fragility. In Piano Trio Op.70 No.1 in D-major, “Ghost”, the artists present a very different canvas, with the Allegro vivace’s opening utterances energetic and uncompromising contrasting with moments of idyllic tranquillity. As to the second movement - Largo assai ed espressivo - referred to by Carl Czerny as music that “resembles an appearance from the underworld”, the haunting serenity of its opening took both players and audience into the world of Beethoven’s fantastical Romantic imaginings, with its frantic, repetative fragments, plaintive melodic lines, sudden contrasts, agitated tremolos, unsettled harmonies and, above all, eerie floating descents of the piano right hand and rumbling bass notes in the left (endorsed by Omri Epstein’s signature lavish use of the sustaining pedal.) The Presto movement’s convivial manner, occasional whimsy, its nimble graciousness and transparency, restored a sense of well-being, though not devoid of divergence to remote keys. The three insightful and accomplished artists -   Van Bellen and the Epstein brothers - offer performance that addresses the minutest gesture, that is timbrally rich, spontaneous, lithe, sensitive and alive, engaging wholeheartedly in the gamut of personal emotions inherent in the chamber music medium. 

 

Inscribed in Italian, the cover page to Beethoven’s Sonata for violin and piano No.9 Op.47 in A-major, “Kreutzer”, reads: “Sonata for piano and violin obbligato written in a concertante style, similar to a concerto, composed and dedicated to his friend, R. Kreuzer, member of the Conservatory of Music in Paris, first violin of the Academy of Arts, and of the Imperial Chamber, by L. van Beethoven.” When the composer dedicated the work to Rodolphe Kreutzer in 1805, the violinist was already internationally renowned for his virtuosity and celebrated for a new style of violin playing characterized by a full tone and legato style. (The work was, however, originally written to be performed by virtuosic violinist George Bridgetower.) Musically revolutionary for its time, pushing the boundaries of contemporaneous style, and being perhaps the longest sonata written up to then, it is grand not only in length but also in its tone-range and dynamics. At the Eilat Chamber Music Festival, this work concluded Concert No.2, a recital performed by violinist David Grimal (France) and pianist Boris Berezovsky (Russia). The artists wove the many facets of the opening movement into playing that was carefully detailed, majestic, delicate and exciting. Issued in with tender and genial playing on the part of Berezovsky, the Andante con variazione offered a tableau of variations that was lyrical, thoughtful, ornamented (violin in Var. II), optimistic, rhapsodic and beautifully coordinated, to be followed by the Presto - an upbeat rondo in 6/8 meter in the character of an Italian tarantella, its sense of urgency never getting in the way of the performers’ sense of balance and good taste.

 

An artistic collective, Les Dissonances (France) plays without a conductor. All players are of equal standing, working together in an environment based on freedom that aims to restore the dialogue between musicians and composers. The orchestra was established by violinist David Grimal in 2004.  Concert No.11 of the Eilat Chamber Music Festival comprised Beethoven’s Concerto for violin and orchestra in D-major Op.61 and Symphony No.4 in B-major Op.60, both works composed in 1806. The concerto was originally considered unplayable. We heard Grimal soloing in the concerto. Although not an orchestra of period instruments, the natural horns played added warmth to the general timbre. Altogether, the wind sections were pleasing. Grimal highlighted the work’s splendid sentiments and power, his cadenzas rich, daring and elaborate and, although he did not so much as offer a hint of a conducting gesture, all instrumentalists joined to play with impressive precision. 

David Grimal, Les Dissonances (Maxim Reider)

 

A unique Beethoven event of the festival was a relaxed, late-night event titled “Beethoven’s Mandolin”, performed by Israeli artists Alon Sariel (mandolin) and Ishay Shaer (piano). At the beginning of his career, Ludwig van Beethoven composed at least six works for mandolin and keyboard, four of which survive. They were written during the composer’s sojourn in Prague in 1796 and dedicated to Countess Josephine von Clary-Aldringen ("pour la belle Josephine '') who played the mandolin. Here was a fine opportunity for the Eilat Festival audience to hear these delightful, lesser-known works - the Andante con variazione WOO 44B, with its jaunty major-minor fluctuations, the lyrical Andante in E-flat major WOO 43B, touching and cantabile, the appealing tripartite Sonatina in C-minor WOO 43A - all sincerity and delicacy - with Sariel’s sparing ornamentation appearing in repeated sections, and the Sonatina in C-major WOO 44A - a smiling, carefree piece, its minor section hardly hinting at a grey cloud. Charming house music, with the silvery sound of the mandolin blending in an entirely uncommon manner with the piano (the works would have probably been played on harpsichord or fortepiano. Shaer’s liberal  use of the una corda - soft - pedal made for judicious balance between the two instruments) the pieces’ sweetness and playful esprit were presented here to the delight of all present.

 

Then to new 21st century works inspired by Beethoven’s music, with Sariel and Shaer performing world premieres of two works by Uri Caine (b.1956), a New York City-based composer, pianist and improviser renowned for his ingenious weaving together of the classical- and jazz traditions. “Aleph-Beet(hoven)” creates a busy, entertaining scene bristling with humour, quotations from several Beethoven works, individual writing for the two instruments, jazzy- and Classical associations, both dissonant- and tender moments and winding up with a few jolly chord clusters. “17 Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, for mandolin and piano” is Caine’s unique set of variations on a Beethoven subject. Opening in a more-or-less Classical vein, the piece quickly launches into the many variations, engaging in such styles as tango, folk idiom, ragtime, jazz and klezmer and using such techniques as “bottleneck” (a technique of playing plucked instruments by sliding a metal tube, originally a glass bottleneck, along the  strings to alter pitch). The artists gave a polished, skilful and dedicated performance of the work, meeting its many technical- and musical challenges and presenting Caine’s rich palette of tonal colours, as the work moved in and out of tonality and from intensity to tranquillity, to conclude with a major-scale variation in march rhythm. 



Ishay Shaer (Jurriaan Brobber)

Alon Sariel (aicf.com)