REFLECTING BEETHOVEN

BY ALAN SWAIN

What a strange and unsettling 18 months it has been for everybody. At last concerts are happening with live audiences again. I reflect on the events of recent times as I begin the long drive from my house in Gloucestershire all the way down the M4, tracing the South coast of Wales to Pembrokeshire. 2020 was to be a big year for Beethoven, being 250 years since his birth. I wonder just how many concerts were cancelled last year? How have musicians around the world been coping with no income? Will we ever ‘get back to normal?’ Was the rupture so big that live music has changed forever?

It’s 27 August 2021 and I’m driving to do a concert in St Davids Cathedral which features us playing two trombone quartets. Back in February, Welsh National Opera (WNO) broadcast a concert on Radio 3 from the excellent Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff. It was a Beethoven programme – a hangover from the previous year’s programming. The trombones played the Beethoven Drei Equali for four trombones. Roger Cutts, WNO principal trombone, had an idea of how we could use this broadcast to create a competition and increase the trombone quartet repertoire at the same time. He suggested to the student composers at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama that they compose a companion piece for the Beethoven Equali. We had six very different entries and the winner was chosen. Congratulations to Tomos Owen Jones for the winning entry, Three Equals for Trombone Quartet. And now I was on my way to St David’s, at the end of August, to perform the world première as part of a concert in the Fishguard Festival given by the Orchestra of WNO.

Driving along I remember thinking about poor Beethoven. He wrote the trombone quartets in 1812. This means that if he wasn’t completely deaf by this point his hearing was certainly impaired. This must have been awful for him! Nowadays, especially with the help of things like the Paralympics, we have a deeper understanding of what it’s like being disabled. For Beethoven?

Being a famous composer losing his hearing? And all at the beginning of the 19th century. No hearing aids, no occupational health, no insurance. It’s all a great contrast to today.

As I continued past Cardiff on the M4 I started to think about other contrasts between then and now. We had been rehearsing Tomos’ piece that week and I started to compare his use of harmony with Beethoven’s. The modern one, as you might expect, was using much more dissonance. In addition, Tomos used a much wider dynamic range. There was a lovely fruity low B natural for me on the bass trombone. This note wasn’t even possible to reach on the trombones around in Beethoven’s time. I was looking forward to hearing that ringing around the cathedral. There were similarities too. Tomos carefully used similar voicing to the

OUTSIDE ST. DAVIDS CATHEDRAL, ST DAVIDS. L-R THOMAS KILBY, DAFFYD THOMAS, TOMOS OWEN JONES, ALAN SWAIN, ROGER CUTTS. PHOTO CREDIT MATT DOWNES.

Beethoven at times before opening it out. The highest trombone is an alto in both cases. The lowest trombone could be played on a tenor for the Beethoven. Not so for the more modern piece because of the low range. Who did Beethoven have in mind when he wrote it? Was it local players? What kind of instruments did they have? Did Beethoven know these players well? Maybe he was already thinking of putting trombones in his next symphony. The 5th has two tenors and a bass. The 6th just two tenors. Nothing in 7 or 8. Back to three in the section for the great 9th .

I grew quite poetic passing Port Talbot. In my mind the modern towers of the steel works spewing polluting smoke and noise into the air contrasted so romantically with the achingly beautiful South Welsh rolling hills and coastline. Just how the Beethoven contrasts with the piece written by Tomos Jones, the winning entry of the competition. We are again able to perform to a large audience after the enforced silence of the last 18 months. Music is alive and it touches us from across the centuries as we bring to life marks put on a piece of paper by one of the greatest composers to have ever lived. And we, the trombone section of Welsh National Opera, get the chance to play together again - something which we have all been wanting to do for so long. And then the usual happened! I got stuck in heavy traffic at Swansea! Pop! There goes my reverie.

The banality of modern life came back, and I started to do the maths concerning the rest of my journey. Panicking for the next fifty miles I began thinking that, like every musician I know, even though I had left with two hours to spare for just such a thing happening – I was going to be late! Argghh!

Arriving with only a few moments to spare, the concert went really well. Tomos’ piece, on its world première, was very well received. I hope we get a chance to perform both pieces together again. I wonder if musicians will have traffic worries in 200 years from now?

A workshop performance of Tomos Owen Jones’ Three Equals for Trombone Quartet, along with all the other entries to the WNO/RWCMD competition, can be found on the WNO YouTube channel

Alan Swain is Principal Bass Trombone with Welsh National Opera, he also hosts a radio show every Saturday morning at 11am on www.edge.radio. ◆