A CONVERSATION ON BEETHOVEN’S SYMPHONIES

Introduction

JAN SWAFFORD – It is quite incredible that the recordings on this cycle were captured over a span of thirteen years. Perhaps it’s logical that the journey began with the First Symphony, which you performed with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (VFCO) in 2009. Before the first rehearsal, did you sense that something special was about to happen? Did you have much experience at that point conducting these Symphonies?

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Yes, and no. I started to conduct in 2003. In all honesty, by 2009, I had only performed the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies. Having said this, from age nineteen, I became completely immersed in the Beethoven string quartets. And for the next seventeen years, there was not a single month when I didn’t perform at least one of them with the Takács Quartet, which I founded in 1976. They were in my DNA, and I was fortunate to have studied them with some of the greatest musicians of modern times. We worked with Alfred Brendel on the late opuses, and with the Amadeus Quartet on many others. György Kurtág coached us for countless hours as we learned each work, often saying:

So after all of that, when I started to conduct the symphonies, I felt at home. After intensely experiencing all of the quartets, on all the great stages of the world, it felt like a continuation of my voyage with this great man.

The VFCO’s artistic culture functions on the same wavelength as an intimate chamber group, centered around constant communication and fearless discovery. So before the first rehearsal of the First Symphony, all those years ago, I was certain that this family-like ensemble was the perfect vehicle to access Beethoven’s creative spirit. One shared objective is to perform without any self-consciousness or fear. I came from a great tradition of Hungarian musicians who always told us that the main focus should not be on avoiding mistakes, but playing from the heart. And if something goes wrong, it’s part of the journey. From the beginning of our relationship, I remember that my dear friends in the VFCO were saying that they had never encountered a conductor who would hear mistakes and react by saying, “hey, who cares? Live dangerously!” For me, the most important thing is that everyone trusts, supports, and inspires one another.

JAN SWAFFORD – And you’re directly echoing Beethoven in that sentiment! He really felt that getting the spirit of a piece was more important than always hitting the right notes.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Absolutely. We are always collectively inspired by one of his most famous quotes:

Haydn and firmly situated in the 18th century. He wrote it in a hurry, to serve as a showy finish for his first solo concert in Vienna.

It begins with a dissonant chord in the wrong key, a gambit not all that radical if a little cheeky. The point is that it commences with a sense of searching for its key. That searching quality will abide in the symphonies. From there the work is generally high-spirited, sometimes to the point of rowdy. The slow movement is one of Beethoven’s few bows to the elegant and precious atmosphere of the 18th-century galant style. He calls the third movement a minuet, but it’s a speedy one that is really a scherzo, that light and dashing genre invented by Haydn for string quartets, which Beethoven was first to put into symphonies. The finale begins with some wry throat-clearing gestures before launching into a fleetfooted and carefree movement.

SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN C MAJOR, OP. 21 (1800)

Beethoven was not scared of any of his models or competitors, but at the same time he was intensely aware of the repertoire and cautious about making precipitous jumps onto somebody else’s turf. When he first took up a symphony, after several years of experimenting with ideas, he did not try to make a huge statement but rather issued a comparatively modest, though still buoyant work audibly indebted to his teacher

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – For me, Beethoven’s First Symphony could easily be mistaken for Joseph Haydn’s One Hundred and Fifth. He wrote it at the same time that Haydn was composing both The Creation and The Seasons. Jokingly, I often imagine Beethoven saying to himself after finishing the score: “Here is the Symphony that ‘Papa Joseph’ would write if he wasn’t preoccupied with the Oratorios.”

JAN SWAFFORD – Yet there’s still an element of foreshadowing. He starts the first movement in the wrong key, and it’s not until a little while later that we realize it’s in C major.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Right. I also find it interesting that Beethoven starts the First, Second, and Third Symphonies in energetic and surprising ways. Even the famous opening pizzicato of the First Symphony is punctuated by a sort of exclamation mark. The second movement brings a different type of micro-shock. Viennese concertgoers probably expected a lyrical melody from the very first bar, likely in the first violins. But instead, totally alone and in whispering pianissimo, the second violins open with a fragmented, dancing scherzando. In the third movement, we start to see the constant and extreme exploitation of dynamics that will define Beethoven’s style. This quality is crucial in achieving his genius capacity to manipulate the listener’s psychology. He starts this movement piano, then jumps to forte, then fortissimo, then piano, then pianissimo, then crescendos to forte, followed by fortissimo. I remember stopping the VFCO shortly after they started to play, saying: “Listen my friends, I have to be the ‘lawyer’ of this great man when it comes to dynamics; it is our obligation to play exactly what he wrote.” This was the first of many times that I made such a statement.

Speaking of inspiration, I often share somewhat crazy analogies per each movement to stimulate a shared imagination amongst the group. For example, in the fourth movement, we have this famous opening with a very tentative phrase from the violins, followed by an explosion of momentum once the exposition truly begins.

Before our first reading, I told the VFCO that for me, this passage sounds like a child on Christmas morning, opening a Lego set of a race car with a small motor inside. Slowly and carefully, they put all of the pieces together. Then, all of a sudden, they click the final block into place and the vehicle springs to life and zooms across the room!

SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN D MAJOR, OP. 36 (1802)

The Second Symphony is everything the First is not: big, ambitious, distinctive. All the same, it is a one-off, not quite in the mature Beethoven symphonic voice. Which is to say that he was not yet settled on what he wanted to do with symphonies, but ready to be bold with them, and if his listeners were shocked (which some were), that was not his concern. In compensation, he provided something of a romp, the main model for the symphony being comic opera in general and Mozart’s in particular. The whole can be seen as a kind of grand buffa , with scenes and schemes and lovers and clowns.

The muscular and dashing first movement is followed by a lyrical second, recalling that even in comic opera there can poignant interludes. Then comes the Beethovenian orchestral scherzo, here with a driving and jumping rhythm. The finale opens memorably with a wild whoop that could be interpreted as a symphonic hiccup or the cry of a jackass. The real joke is that the whoop is actually the theme of a rollicking movement, and it is duly developed as such. The Second is an expansive reminder that Beethoven, who set out to express the whole of life in his music, did not neglect laughter.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – The real Beethoven, for me, starts in the Second Symphony, when he dares to show people that he has found his own path. He raises the curtain on the first movement with a classic tutti figure: “bah bahhhhh.” To my ears, this sounds like a person who is not bowing in front of the aristocrats. It’s as though he’s saying, “I am as big as you, and I know who I am.” But then immediately after those first two notes, we get this lyrical, teneramente line that sounds vulnerable. Like he’s longing for love.

The essence of this piece is opera buffa, and in this spirit, he seems to present a variety of main characters throughout the introduction. Then, in the exposition, they spring into action. I once counted all of the accents and sforzandi throughout the first movement alone. There are three hundred and forty five in total! Every single one is used intentionally to bring out the humor at the heart of this piece.

The second movement feels a lot like a love declaration. It’s in A major, which was a key that Mozart often used in his operas to depict loving exchanges. Some moments are dramatic and full of tears, as we hear in the oboes at bar 38. He even verges on drama at certain junctures.

JAN SWAFFORD – It contains a mingling of moods. There is love, sorrow, conflict, and everything in between. Then in the third movement, he dared to write the first symphonic scherzo that is actually labelled as such.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – And in a way that is much more adventurous than what we hear in the First Symphony. He’s no longer afraid to go even deeper in terms of rhythmic motifs and dynamic contrasts. Every time we start this movement, I am always very much excited for the oboe solo of the trio – the first of many similar phrases he will write in this context as time goes on.

JAN SWAFFORD – The fourth movement begins with one of his trademark, hilariously short motives, which sounds to me like a donkey call. He takes this fragment and drives it to lunatic proportions.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – The public must have been in disbelief that such a tiny figure could somehow become the basis of the entire finale!

SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN E FLAT MAJOR, OP. 55 (1803)

In school, students are generally taught that revolutionary works in music are a matter of technique: innovations in harmony, rhythm, form, and so forth. The reality is that the great revolutions rose from composers finding a new kind of inspiration from outside music and inventing a new language to express it. So it was with Beethoven’s Third Symphony: it was written from first note to last as a work called ‘Bonaparte.’ In other words, a piece about Napoleon, who in those years was marching his victorious armies around Europe and declaring himself the fulfillment of the French Revolution. With this piece, Beethoven was not only attaching his music to the most potent figure of the age, he was joining his name to Napoleon’s in history. With that ambition, he wrote a work that changed the symphony and to a degree changed music once and for all.

The surging, searching, restless first movement has from early on been called an image of a battle or a military campaign. The opening theme can be called the hero; myriad transformations and echoes of that theme permeate the movement. There is a sense of vast forces moving across a landscape and across the mind. The story of the work continues in the second movement, an expansive funeral march beginning mournful and dark, with basses imitating funeral drums. In the middle rises an exalted passage that amounts to a hymn not to God, but to humanity. The end of the movement is a cry of desolation, fading to silence. Call the third movement the return to life after mourning, a joyous scherzo with a piping folktune and in the middle a robust passage of hunting horns.

The finale begins with a militant introduction fading to a dance tune led by a simple bass line that is the theme of what will be a series of variations. In the process, the dance gestures are gradually turned toward something transcendent and heroic. The finale can be seen as an image of what the hero has wrought, a just and harmonious society symbolized by the transformation of a little dance into a vision of a humanistic world. The end is unbounded jubilation.

I think it’s a self-portrait, depicting a man who goes through extreme ups and downs in life. From the Heiligenstadt testament, when he’s on the verge of suicide (which

I hear throughout the second movement), to the glorious triumph of the finale.

Looking at the first movement, I’m amazed by the fact that the development section is radically longer than the exposition. Beethoven once said that this symphony must only be programmed in the first half of a concert, because it cannot be delivered effectively to a tired public. I remember telling the orchestra that I wanted them to avoid any sort of military toughness that they might associate with the piece. Specifically because E flat major is such a warm tonality. The beginning should be unbelievably energetic, of course, but the character must never be rigid and always be round.

JAN SWAFFORD – At the very end of the first movement, the hero theme suddenly returns in a very quiet way, but this time it’s sustained. And gradually, the whole orchestra gathers behind it into a big proclamation. To me, it’s a literal image of the hero leading his triumphant forces, with his theme permeating every single thing, just as it had in fragments throughout the entire movement.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – And the jubilation also sets the stage in a brilliant psychological way for the quiet, downtrodden start of the second movement. The contrast is absolutely shocking. Whereas the first movement presents a kind of victorious mood, starting forte and finishing forte in a triumph – the second movement is coming from nowhere and going to nowhere. It feels more like defeat than triumph. Dynamically, my personal belief is that when any movement starts from nothing and ends in nothing, it’s always embodying a special and spiritual sense of depth.

JAN SWAFFORD – The movement is incredibly complex in terms of form, and it has so many different emotional areas and landscapes. In the middle, a fugue develops, which is one of the most transcendent moments in all of music.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – And in another moment of psychological genius, he follows it by bringing the sotto voce texture back briefly, until BAM… There’s a sudden re-opening of the earth, and the soul returns to deep sadness and mourning. Then we have the massive coda at bar 213, which is followed by shocking pianissimo. Here, I always remember Kurtág telling me as a youngster:

The first two movements are thirty minutes, which is already as long as the entire Second Symphony. I feel that at this point, for the third movement, he couldn’t possibly write a dance. It had to be something different.

JAN SWAFFORD – Exactly. Because first we have the battle, and then the funeral march. So what comes next?

Well, I think he poses a big question: what’s the purpose of mourning? And the answer is: to return to life. This third movement contains the joy of life.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Yes. And in the middle, we even go hunting! It’s shockingly simple folk music, but extremely difficult for the orchestra. I was just thinking about one of the biggest challenges facing the conductor of a Beethoven symphony. You must lead the orchestra spiritually through all these mega-contrasts of emotion and be a partner with them emotionally. But at the same time, one must guide them physically – so that the performance itself can be as solid and precise as a Swiss watch, keeping the structure clear and concise. It’s incredibly difficult to balance these two worlds of extreme emotion and exact musical execution. A bit like if I were to drive a Formula One car perfectly at 250 Km/H through the course in Monte Carlo, whilst at the same time having a deeply heartfelt and empathetic conversation on the telephone! Regarding the fourth movement – the mythological story of Prometheus had a huge impact on my interpretation. This storming drive to make humanity better is what it’s all about.

JAN SWAFFORD – Definitely. This is based on the music that he wrote for Prometheus, the ballet. And specifically the creatures that the mythic deity makes out of clay, which are enlightened by the Gods and most importantly: made human by art. I think that really resonated with Beethoven.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – There is such a human warmth to it. I’m always paying careful attention to how the great man uses repeats in the beginning of the movement. Because I beg the musicians, with anything repeated, to never play it exactly the same way during the second pass. I echo exactly what Pablo Casals told his students: “If humans say something twice, it’s almost always different the second time. And if you’re saying ‘I love you’ twice to a girlfriend or boyfriend in exactly the same way, they won’t believe it, because it’s not human!”

Personally, I always feel a great sense of Hungarian pride when we reach letter C. Because I’m completely convinced that he is quoting a traditional “Verbunkos”.

I read that Beethoven heard a Hungarian gypsy band whilst living in Vienna. They must have played this tune for him, which is indeed still a dance, but also meant as a military recruitment anthem. They would perform it for young men - giving them wine, and fancy outfits, and saying: “Come join the army! You will defend your beautiful country and girls will love you in your beautiful uniforms because of it.” So every time we hit this passage, I’m insisting to the orchestra that we bring forth a strong smell of onions and paprika!

JAN SWAFFORD – I’m sure you’re right. In the end, this finale is Beethoven’s Promethean gift to humanity. And the jubilation of the coda, which contains joy beyond description, indicates that he has found the right way, and the right path to an ideal society.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Indeed. And let’s not forget the geniality of how he starts the coda with the oboe at bar 349, very quietly and lyrically in the piano dynamic. Then from there, building in the coming minutes to this enormous crescendo of ‘hallelujah.’ Almost losing himself. It sounds like someone who is singing, or dancing, or both. The whole thing is a miracle.

SYMPHONY NO. 4 IN B FLAT MAJOR, OP. 60 (1806)

With this work, a pattern falls into place in Beethoven’s symphonies: a relatively heavy one followed by a relatively light one. The Third is big, complex, towering; the Fourth is gentle, sunny, witty. It’s not likely that Beethoven was actually thinking of this light and heavy pattern, more that with each major work he was determined to do something new. So after the rigors of the Third, the Fourth was a turn to simplicity of material and form. It begins with a mysterioso and nocturnal introduction, from which a scintillating Allegro vivace erupts with an effect as if doors were thrown open to a glittering ballroom. That dancing atmosphere carries into the second movement, which is made of long singing lines over a striding figure that a later era would call a tango rhythm. After a wry, tripping-over-its-feet scherzo, the finale is founded on a single idea, a scampering and giddy fiddle tune.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – This piece feels like a deliberate simplification after the “Eroica”, which was a very complicated and complex ‘brother.’ He wanted the next one born, out of the nine, to be much more simple. As the first movement gets going via the exposition, we again see the use of extreme dynamic contrasts indicated all over the score. Forte vs. fortissimo, piano vs. pianissimo, and so on. Once again putting on my ‘lawyer’ hat, I remember demanding to the VFCO that we take these dynamics 200% seriously. These twists and turns are what separate good performances from great ones.

JAN SWAFFORD – Completely agreed. Looking at the second movement, I think the melody is prophetic of these long lines that we hear in his later works.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Yes, and I also notice how similar the first bar is to the beginning of the Violin Concerto, with its brief timpani/tutti introduction before the melody gets going. The connection makes a lot of sense, because after the Fourth, the Concerto was the next piece he wrote. Furthermore, I’m always struck by the fact that almost directly in the middle of this movement, he suddenly creates a massive drama. But it only lasts for four bars. Before our performance in 2011, I recall looking through the whole score and realizing that this is the only true moment of angst, or sturm und drang, throughout the entire piece. Otherwise the landscape is quite tranquil and simple.

JAN SWAFFORD – The third movement is also a masterclass in simplicity. With a quiet trio that is soft, but flowing.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Plus, there’s such contrast between the characters and dynamics that exist within the scherzo alone. I told the musicians that the “B” section from bar 12, where he suddenly shifts into piano from fortissimo, should be reminiscent of fish who are looking at each other nervously through murky water. Again, sometimes an unexpected picture like this one really gets the attention of the musicians and leads to unique color changes.

JAN SWAFFORD – And then we arrive at this totally manic finale! It’s so difficult to sustain the energy throughout, because it’s really a one-idea movement. How did you achieve this?

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – You will laugh, but here, again, I used another metaphor. The fourth movement contains even more huge dynamic shifts than the other movements combined. As you said, it’s difficult to sustain the intensity through so many abrupt changes. So I told the players that in these situations where he instantly shifts between fortissimo and pianissimo, it should sound like a tiger who suddenly morphs into Bambi for a short period of time. Before morphing directly back into a tiger. There are these unbelievably energetic statements which must be bold and strong, but they’re immediately followed by passages that are light and breezy. Listening back, this somewhat hilarious imagery seems to have worked!

JAN SWAFFORD – It certainly did. And by the way, one thing we should mention often is that Beethoven rarely gets credit for how funny he can be or for how much comical music he wrote.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Absolutely. In my opinion, nobody talks enough about Beethoven’s sense of humor! But he has a very special brand of comedy, and if you listen closely, you begin to fall in love with it.

SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN C MINOR, OP. 67 (1808)

The first movement of the Fifth Symphony is a definition of what is called Beethoven’s C minor mood, which tends to the driving and demonic. If the Fourth Symphony was a matter of simplification of content and form in service of a genial work, the Fifth is simplicity plus intensity. At first some took the piece as a joke: the idea that a whole movement could be founded on an expansion of its first four notes seemed absurd. But the piece is about obsession and compaction. From early on, the driving force of the first movement was associated with a sense of implacable fatality. The starkness of the opening tattoo is a matter of compressing ideas, a first theme not expansive but exploding like a thunderstroke. The first few seconds prophesy most of what is going to come in the movement: drama unto violence, a sinewy orchestral sound, the rhythmic tattoo that will be heard relentlessly through the first movement and in varied guises to the end of the piece.

The second movement is a breathtaking contrast to the stormy first, a stretch of largely gentle lyric beauty, the first movement’s rhythmic tattoo now tamed into flowing figures. The striding brass moments foreshadow the brassy finale: Beethoven is pulling together the movements of a symphony tighter than ever before, a few ideas cycling and evolving through its course. The fatality of the first movement, and its rhythmic tattoo, return in a different guise in the third movement, starting with a burst of pealing horns and a troubled atmosphere — relieved by a comic trio in the middle, where the basses seem to be having trouble with their racing figure. This movement has the meter and tempo of a scherzo, but Beethoven does not label it that, and its tone is far from the usual gaiety of a scherzo; the word means “joke,” and this movement is no joke, even if the trio is ironic. Then comes one of the singular moments in Beethoven: the music falls into a fog, the tattoo heard in a throbbing timpani, and from that fog erupts the triumphant brass proclamation of the finale. Famously, the Fifth traces a path from fatality to triumph, darkness to light. The finale is a kind of kaleidoscopic ecstasy, but with one musical caveat. As noted, Beethoven is drawing the movements together, joining the last two, and now in the finale the elation sinks down and we are back in the ambiguous music of the third movement. Beethoven knew that no triumph is complete, that the demon can always come back. The end of the symphony, though, is all joy, the fatalistic descending opening tattoo turned into ascending triumph.

If the Third Symphony painted the triumph of a hero in the world, the Fifth implies an inner triumph over the force of fate. For a composer who had to overcome his own fate, the advent of deafness, that story is profoundly personal, and may explain some of this music’s ferocity. The Fifth Symphony marks the climax of Beethoven’s heroic period. From this point, he would search for new territories.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – In approaching the first movement, I always imagine a three-year-old child who sits down with a crayon and some paper. They start by crudely drawing four simple lines on a blank page. Then from this scrawl, a master architect creates the most phenomenal cathedral on earth. I think it’s a good comparison!

JAN SWAFFORD – It’s brilliant. Because that’s exactly what people said at first: “This can’t be a theme… It’s just four notes! How ridiculous. You can’t build a movement on that…” But he ignored conventions and just went with it.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – For the second movement, I’ve written in my score: “Here is a superhuman person who has walked through fire, but suddenly gets onto his knees and thanks God that he is alive.” The whole thing is about gratitude. It’s in A flat major, and he additionally writes dolce. I told the VFCO that it should be expressive, but also not too rich. Poetic, but not bel canto. I’m struck by the fact that once we get our first big fortis- simo at bar 31, he deliberately writes this doubtful, pianissimo phrase in bar 38, directly after such a triumphant moment. It seems to imply that he’s not quite sure whether victory is in hand. One can compare Beethoven to a great painter who mastered the technique of depicting shadows. When he wants to show us the brightest light, it is often surrounded by darkness.

I love what Berlioz said about the pianissimo beginning of the third movement, which is that it reflects “the gaze of a mesmerizer.”

JAN SWAFFORD – Exactly. And out of this gaze he reinvents the fate motif in a very extroverted way. Eventually we reach the trio in the middle, which is again a moment of classic Beethovenian comedy: a joke about double bass players who can’t get their act together. He got a lot of grief from bass players, who told him that his parts were too hard. I think he’s mocking what it should sound like when they practice, and hopefully perfect, the notes on the page.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – It’s really quite funny. And then by the end, he deliberately crafts this iconic and incomparable pianissimo. It’s so mysterious and so soft, which leads the hallelujah of the fourth movement’s attacca to sound as radiant as the opening of heaven’s gates. Again, he needed to create a fog in order to expose this kind of mega-contrast lurking within. In the depths of this transition to the finale, I always feel a threatening atmosphere. As though the plot could either go in one of two directions – bad or good. But instead of more conflict, he throws us into triumphant relief.

JAN SWAFFORD – Do you have any special instructions for the orchestra when guiding them through this legendary transition?

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – I always remind them that although enormous energy is required, the quality of sound must always remain higher than the decibel.

Yes, the great man writes fortissimo. But our approach must be warm, and human, behind and beyond the extremes of raw energy.

SYMPHONY

NO. 6 IN F MAJOR, OP. 68 (1808)

Call the Sixth Symphony the anti-Fifth, answering the storms and exaltations of the earlier work with a sunny vacation in the country: no shadows, no drama except for a passing thunderstorm that gives way to a rosy sunset.

Beethoven was not a conventionally religious man; his God was the primal creator of the Enlightenment, nature his scripture and cathedral. He shaped the Sixth on the story of a country sojourn, but implicitly it is a sacred work. At the same time, as a pastoral piece it is part of a long musical tradition — recall the “Pastoral Symphony” in Handel’s Messiah — that by Beethoven’s time had become a tired musical cliché. In taking on that genre, Beethoven challenged himself to create an unmistakably pastoral piece that was not a cliché but utterly fresh, yet always as simple as a summer breeze and a babbling brook. The movement titles tell the story. First movement: “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country.” Loping rhythms like a donkey-cart, a piping folksong, warm sun in the orchestra, no minor keys and few minor chords: bliss. Second movement, “Scene by the brook,” babbling and flowing, ending with birdcalls. Scherzo, “Merry gathering of country folk,” folksy in tone, its trio a stamping country dance. The repeat of the scherzo is interrupted by distant thunder, and suddenly the dance and the form are shattered; a storm is upon us. Which is to say that amidst the most peaceful music Beethoven ever wrote, he drops a stretch of maximal violence that breaks up what had been predictable, just as a storm breaks up a party. The gist of the gentle, sunset finale is in the title: “Shepherd’s Song: Happy and thankful feelings after the storm.” It begins by evoking an alpenhorn sounding a yodeling tune.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – For me, this piece is Beethoven’s love declaration to nature. He said that he loved trees much more than people, and remarked that he was happiest when he would go to the countryside. Looking at the beginning of the first movement, side-by-side with the beginning of the Fifth Symphony, you can’t imagine a bigger contrast between openings. He starts with F and C natural in the violas and celli. I always tell the musicians that this should smell like the soil of the earth. It shouldn’t be passive, but rather intoxicating. The second movement is all about flow. We happen upon this brook, where the water is constantly and peacefully churning. Yehudi Menuhin said that as a young boy, he remembered lying down on the deck of a boat on a sunny day with a light breeze. He looked up at the mast above, swaying back and forth gently in perpetual motion, and realized that through this image, he finally understood the slow movement of the “Pastorale”. It’s all about constant movement. That’s why I tell the orchestra that the first 138 bars must all be pickups to bar 140, the final measure.

In the third movement, it is deliberate that he writes pianissimo in the beginning of the scherzo, making things quite light. Because this sets up the loud, bombastic trio to be even more peasant-like and rustic. After all, they are dancing in muddy boots, not aristocratic slippers.

JAN SWAFFORD – And there’s also a sforzando under every note in the bass. He really wanted a heavy, beerdrinking, onion-eating sort of sound, which is followed by the turbulent fourth movement. Beethoven said that, in this symphony, he was writing a piece about peacefulness. But into the middle of his score, he drops the most violent music one could possibly have written at that time.

GÁBOR

TAKÁCS-NAGY

– I think he needed at least one major conflict. Because it makes the finale even more hymnal, as the shepherd expresses his gratitude to God. As the clouds clear, he opens the fifth movement in a sublime pianissimo. It’s so tender, and teneramente. My theory is that this is Beethoven thanking God that he survived his suicidal thoughts surrounding the Heiligenstädter Testament. Perhaps saying, in his own way: “Thank you for helping me out of the storm.”

One of the most magical moments in all of the symphonies comes during the huge climax he creates near the end, in which he almost loses himself. Then abruptly, by bar 237, he settles down into a quiet and tranquil sotto voce. I read that Beethoven was once completely lost (in the literal sense) in a forest near Vienna, and found himself intoxicated with joy from the beauty that surrounded him. He suddenly went to his knees and thanked the heavens that he was lucky enough to be living on earth, surrounded by such magical beauty. It seems that this moment is exactly what we hear as the masterpiece closes. This is a sacred work.

SYMPHONY NO. 7 IN A MAJOR, OP. 92 (1812)

Richard Wagner declared the Seventh Symphony “the apotheosis of the dance.” It is a collection of moods of dance, from folklike to mournful to ecstatic, all transmuted into a symphony that celebrates rhythm as much as melody.

After the grandest of Beethoven’s symphonic introductions, a folktune in the oboe commences a Vivace of relentlessly driving rhythm – driving like the fateful Fifth Symphony, but here blithe and headlong. The second movement’s atmosphere of solemn and plaintive dance is sui generis and unforgettable from the first time one hears it, a slow stride underlying a slow-rising, mournful song. A scherzo breaks that mood with a jubilant dashing theme, alternating twice with a trio of virtually immobile gracefulness. The exhilarating finale is based on a breathless fiddle reel of Scotch-Irish cast, marked like the first movement by brash, pealing horns. While Beethoven symphonies were typically received at first with confusion unto consternation followed by slow-dawning appreciation, the premiere of the Seventh was an instant triumph. His hearing and health declining and his creative path uncertain, it gave Beethoven a much-needed boost in acclaim, also in his bank account. Still, there would be several painful, struggling, searching years to come before the sublime Last Period took shape in his work.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY –

mance that they had to repeat the movement just after finishing. It blew people away.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – I’m not surprised. Then comes the third movement, which I view as a beautifully orchestrated Austrian village dance. I also love how he does the trio twice, and then says, “I’m going to do it a third time… Oops, no I’m not!” Schumann said he could imagine Beethoven, in the last five bars, deciding he was finished and throwing his pen across the room! With this image in mind, I’m going quasi-attacca into the fourth movement.

But following a performance of the Seventh, that number expands from 25 to 40! The first movement greets us with the sunshine of A major at its very brightest. Again, it’s fascinating how differently each of the symphonies begin. Here, after the Sixth, we get a totally revised approach.

JAN SWAFFORD – This whole symphony is about moods of dance.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Exactly. Which is why I’m quite over-dotting the rhythmic motif that keeps repeating. Otherwise it feels a bit stuck. The second movement is completely sublime, but if you look closely at the melody, it’s just a series of repeated notes. A lesser-known genius would have written something unbelievably boring using the same materials.

JAN SWAFFORD – You never forget your first time hearing this. It was such a huge hit on the first perfor-

JAN SWAFFORD – The finale is a dashing fiddle tune, where he manages to somehow sustain the intensity throughout. The original idea came from one of his arrangements of a Scottish reel called “Nora Crena”.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – And he can hardly control his temperament. We get this maniacal repetition of the first theme.

Clara Schumann’s father said that Beethoven could only have been completely drunk when he wrote this.

It’s the music of someone who has totally lost control.

SYMPHONY NO. 8 IN F MAJOR, OP. 93 (1812)

Like the Second Symphony, the Eighth has the atmosphere of an operatic comedy. It starts with a grandly dancing theme that introduces a movement that is relaxed and good-humored. The second movement begins with a striding tread and a nonchalant, whistling tune recalling one of Mozart’s comic figures – say, Leporello in a sanguine mood. For the third movement, a look back at the old courtly minuet but freed of frills, still in the trance of nostalgia that marks this work: Beethoven with epics and tragedies behind him, looking over music itself with serene pleasure and benevolence. The lighthearted atmosphere carries into a scurrying, capering finale that features an echt-Beethoven musical joke: into the gay F major theme a jarring, out-of-key C sharp intrudes like an unwelcome uncle at a wedding. This being Beethoven, one expects that C sharp to have consequences. The joke is that the note has no consequences, just keeps barging in, until we think the piece is nearly over. At that point the C sharp pops up again and triggers a tonal melee that threatens a harmonic traffic accident, until F major manages to get back in control and we end in high spirits.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – This is the only Beethoven Symphony that starts immediately and obviously in a happy mood from the opening of the first movement. It’s like someone ringing your doorbell, and when you open up to greet them – instead of any pleasantries, they immediately shout: “I am ecstatic!!”

JAN SWAFFORD – And from the very start, it’s also getting into the bigger orchestral sound of the Ninth Symphony. Even though this is a backward-looking, nostalgic piece, the soundscape is quite large.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Yes, and expanded even more by the dynamics. In the first movement alone, the great man writes 140 bars of fortissimo. In other words, 35% of this movement should be played as loudly as possible. Specifically in the development, he writes 61 bars of constant fortissimo, which is something I’ve never seen in any of his other scores. Except perhaps the Große Fuge.

JAN SWAFFORD – It’s also a comic piece that’s completely opera buffa in terms of background.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Especially the second movement! The beginning must be nearly shocking for the public, because they are expecting something far more lyrical. It starts with such minimalistic accompaniment, which always reminds me of chickens pecking at the ground. The humor of this scene, juxtaposed against the peasant dance of the second theme, is subtle but enormous.

JAN SWAFFORD – Then, in the third movement, he writes a very old-fashioned minuet. But in his new, largescale orchestral voice.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – And to set the mood, I told the VFCO to imagine sailors who are dancing on a ship that is constantly pitching back and forth in heavy seas. For the duet between the cello and horn, he wanted again an enormous contrast. It’s like true chamber music, crammed into an otherwise large-scale sonic backdrop. A total difference from the beginning.

JAN SWAFFORD – The joke of the fourth movement, for me, is that he writes this buoyant tune in F major, and then suddenly follows it by a C sharp major fortissimo which completely interrupts what our ears expect.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – That C sharp always reminds me of when I’m in a group of people and someone says, “Oh, I have a great joke!... But I forgot it!” And of course later on in the finale, he brings this note back and goes completely crazy, leading to total harmonic chaos that takes an eternity to drop back into F major.

SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN D MINOR, OP. 125 (1824)

There is a train of thought having to do with ethics and society that stretches through Beethoven’s mature music and climaxes in the Ninth Symphony. The Eroica evokes a hero and his impact on the world. Beethoven’s opera Fidelio is a story of personal heroism, a woman who through the power of love frees her husband from prison and brings down a tyrant. The Fifth Symphony is a study in private heroism, a struggle with fate that ends in triumph. The Ninth is at once a completion of that train of thought and a new vision of life and society.

The Ninth returns to the formal complexity and humanistic concerns of the Eroica, adding an unprecedented choral finale setting Friedrich Schiller’s ode “To Joy.”

Beethoven’s time knew that poem as an artifact of the revolutionary 1780s, and he intended the Ninth to be a reminder of the humanistic ideals of the French Revolution. Writing in a period of reaction and repression, the Vienna he lived in a police state with spies everywhere, Beethoven wanted to remind humanity of the great dream of liberty. The Ninth is not just a sermon about brotherhood and joy and liberty; it is intended to help keep those dreams alive.

The first movement is craggy and heroic but also nervous and searching, ending with an ominous funeral march. In this last of his several funeral marches Beethoven buries a hero for the last time – and with him the heroic ideal of his middle period. Once he had hoped figures like Emperor Joseph II and Napoleon, whom his- tory remembers as “benevolent despots,” were going to create more progressive societies by decree. But all those heroes had failed, and Beethoven didn’t believe in them anymore. If the unsettled first movement is a return to his heroic style, his word for it in a sketch was “despair.”

The second movement is the most massive and complex of his scherzos, irresistible in its driving vigor and its tunefulness. After the intricate fugal counterpoint of the main theme, the trio is like a little skipping folktune you’d whistle on a sunny day. In his late music, Beethoven became at once more complex and more simple, more spiritual and more earthy. The scherzo gives way to a slow movement that is one of the uncannily beautiful, songful, time-stopping Adagios that marked his final period. The finale arrives as a goal and summation, an epic variation movement for orchestra, choir, and soloists. It is built on an ingenuous little tune like a barroom song that anyone can sing. Today perhaps half the world knows the tune. That was the intention: over and over Beethoven repeats the line from Schiller, “You millions, I embrace you!” From the chorus’s first sung words, “Here’s to Joy, thou god-engendered daughter of Elysium,” the variations stretch from high to low, East to West, including a comic Viennese-style Turkish march between two exalted double fugues.

The finale amounts to an evocation of the harmonious state that the Enlightenment dreamed of and never achieved. In contrast to the Eroica, the poem and the music proclaim that the path to Elysium, the ideal society, is not through the conquering hero but from within ourselves: from brotherhood, love, and joy. Like the American Declaration of Independence, the Ninth calls liberty and happiness the essence of the fulfilled life. Only through freedom can we find joy. As Schiller and Beethoven declare, heroes can’t give us that Elysium under God’s starry heaven. It is something humanity must create for itself.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Opposite the first page of music in my score, I pasted a print from Michelangelo’s painting, The Creation, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It’s the moment that two fingers, from different hands, connect to spark the creation of the universe. For me, the beginning of the first movement must sound like the formation of the cosmos.

Schumann wrote: “This symphony tells of the origin of mankind. Out of chaos comes the core of the deity, which proclaims: ‘let there be light.’ As the sun slowly rises, the first men are enraptured by His glory. We have here nothing less than the timeless narrative from the opening books of the Bible.”

JAN SWAFFORD – Which also precisely describes the beginning of Haydn’s Creation. Because that’s what this opening is based on. I think that Beethoven had a lifetime rivalry with Haydn, that comes up again and again. And my theory is that one of the foundations of the Ninth Symphony is this sense of competition. It’s as if he

Title page from the conductor’s score of the Ninth Symphony was trying to say: “Haydn had his chaos; now let me show you what real chaos sounds like. He had his Austrian National Hymn; I’ll write a hymn for humanity.”

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – It’s unbelievably dramatic, and tense. Filled with conflict and instability. I think this piece had to start in darkness so that the brilliant light of the finale could shine brighter than anything that had ever been written.

I told the musicians that because this movement is so long, if anyone plays anything statically, it begins to feel arduous. So the philosophy I repeated over and over is that it’s 547 bars long, and the first 546 of them are all upbeats for the final measure. In other words, everything has to flow from one section to another. This is often the problem with so-called “perfect” recordings. If people are hyper-focused on being perfect, and perfectly together, suddenly it becomes vertical instead of horizontal and linear.

Every note must be looking into the future.

More than ever, we also tried to exploit all contrasts with an extreme focus on dynamic intensity.

JAN SWAFFORD – And he did it when he was deaf. There are some things that don’t always work in terms of balance. But by and large, it is a re-making of the orchestral idiom in terms of sound. By a deaf man. I can’t say how in awe I am of that.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – It is a miracle. When I began to learn the second movement, I was quite shocked to realize that this was the biggest scherzo that Beethoven ever conceived. Fifteen minutes of pedal-tothe-metal intensity. In fact, it’s maybe the largest scherzo in the whole of the symphonic literature.

JAN SWAFFORD – It’s this incredibly intricate fugue. In his later music, Beethoven became both more complex and more simple. And that’s what this movement embodies, in a nutshell. The scherzo part has incredibly complex, fugal counterpoint. The trio is the simplest thing in the world.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Everyone always talks about the genius of the finale. But I believe that the soul of this piece is found in the third movement. It’s on the same level, magically, as a slow movement from one of the late String Quartets. When the D major arrives in bar 25 at the Andante moderato, I hear this as gratitude from Beethoven to God over the fact that he’s still alive. He had suffered so much, and when you’ve been through such turmoil, you understand peace and joy in a completely different way.

Isaac Stern said in an interview that the most important question in music is never how someone is playing, but why they are playing.

Thinking personally, and reflecting on Beethoven’s Ninth: the reason I’m a musician is to convey emotion on the level that this movement expresses. In hopes of lifting and comforting the spirits of others, and shedding light on what humanity can be at its very best. If you play this piece as brilliantly as possible, those who listen will leave the concert as better people than when they entered.

JAN SWAFFORD – The “terror-fanfare,” as Wagner called it, begins the fourth movement. I think Beethoven put it there to shatter the effect of the slow movement. Do you agree?

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – I think that to achieve the “hallelujah” spirit of the ode “To Joy” later on, he had to somehow threaten the peace that was lingering in the air. Beethoven knew that happiness was never permanent and that the devil could re-emerge at any moment. If he began the next movement in harmony, it wouldn’t be authentically human. Because let’s face it: in life, shit happens.

Originally, there were meant to be words that accompanied the cello and bass recitative that follows. I feel that it must therefore sound as if it’s being sung. Before conducting this myself, I heard many accounts of this section that were quite slow and maestoso. In my opinion, it must present the character of a recitative that is in tempo, and never holding its breath. Of course it shouldn’t be too fast, but I feel the need to keep things flowing. It should be the opposite of metronomic. In the end, my interpretation is meant to sound like a spoken dialogue. It’s of course fascinating that he brings back, between recits, snippets from the earlier movements. Like he can’t quite decide how to continue after all that has already been written. Then, finally, he finds the “Joy” theme. It starts from pianissimo, as if he has heard it distantly in his inner-ear. Therefore I think it should sound distant, and more like humming than singing. Asking the low strings to play without vibrato helps to achieve this unique color. After all, Beethoven doesn’t write dolce until much later, when the first violins famously enter. I had to emphasize to the players that they shouldn’t make things too sweet or cinematic until this indication appears. From there, it builds and builds into the heavens. Until an even more dissonant version of the terror-fanfare interrupts the festive mood.

JAN SWAFFORD – Then suddenly the bass-baritone stands up and says, of all things, “Oh friends, not these tones.” And that’s the place where I burst into tears.

Because this is Beethoven saying it to the world. Schiller didn’t write those words. Beethoven did! And since what follows is basically modeled off of a drinking song, he might as well be saying this to his buddies in a tavern over beers.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Afterwards, we get a brilliant set of variations that delivers us at the Turkish March.

– standing up and stomping around the room, until I found something that actually felt comfortable. People may feel that I take it a bit slow, but marching too fast in a big group is unrealistic!

JAN SWAFFORD – Do you think that the Turkish March is deliberately a bit satirical?

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – A tiny bit, yes. Honestly, it’s hard not to laugh at the first note in the contrabassoon, which is downright funny. Beyond that, he wanted a total contrast from the hymnal style of singing. Something a bit more relatable and less holy.

JAN SWAFFORD – This is followed by an exalted fugue, and then the ‘Alle Menschen’ section, which is really a microcosm of the entire symphony in terms of philosophy. I realized that he had to have written this part before the fugue that precedes it, because the latter contains the countermelody of the former.

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Exactly. And I don’t take the Andante maestoso too slowly, because I think it’s a bridge between the sections before and after. Eventually we reach his “God Texture” at bar 239, which is similarly heard in the Missa solemnis. I always demand a true pianissimo here, even though it’s hard work for the choir and woodwinds. Because although the text indicates humanity looking up at the stars, I love to imagine Beethoven, in total silence, looking down on the world from outer space. Then suddenly, after a millisecond of reflection, I take the famous double fugue from bar 282 at a relatively brisk tempo. After all, it’s marked Allegro energico. This should feel both exalted and exhilarating, which is hard to pull off at a slower pace. It’s also easier and kinder this way for the chorus, who have more opportunities to breathe.

Before the end, at letter R, we arrive at even more doubting music – once again, reminding us that no happiness can be constant. No one would have expected this, and it’s more proof that he was the master architect of unpredictability. The final Prestissimo is so glorious that it can’t really be described in words, so I won’t try.

JAN SWAFFORD – I used to question the fact that they would trot out the Ninth Symphony for great occasions of festivity. But I’ve come to appreciate the fact that this was its intention: a great gesture of the human race.

It’s worth noting that the premiere was given during a very dark time, within a quasi-police state. Beethoven was attaching himself to the universal truth that one can only get joy from freedom. What did you feel when you finished the performance?

GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY – Gratitude towards fate. Because not only had I played all of the string quartets with three dear friends. I had also performed all of the symphonies with my beloved VFCO. That, for me, was a true milestone. In both contexts, I felt that I had truly given all that I possibly could to the world.