Beethoven Weekend, with three concerts given by the Akademie für alte Musik Berlin at the Festival de Lanaudière, will remain as memorable as Paavo Järvi’s complete symphony and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie in 2007.
The Akademie für alte Musik Berlin, known as Akamus, is an orchestra on period instruments led by its first violin, Bernhard Forck. From what we have seen and heard over the last three days, we have no memory of a better orchestra in this obedience.
The qualifier “best” here certainly encompasses the ensemble playing, the virtuosity, the interpretation, but – and this is what distinguishes such an orchestra from symphonic ensembles – essentially the “sound signature”.
Singularity
The sonorities of Akamus are particularly exceptional, individually (bassoons, clarinet), in pairs (oboe-flutes or oboe-clarinets) and together (strings). The case of the strings is striking: the historically informed practice is often linked to a form of tension, greenness or astringency, whereas with Akamus softness and suppleness dominate.
To these intrinsic qualities are added the quality of the instrumentalists (brass, timpanist, who whips up the musical action, for example in the Final of the 5e) and what could be called a sum of intelligences. Thus that of playing standing up, which makes you more alert, more toned, more mobilized. Or that of the arrangement on stage, in ogive, which concentrates the sound like a loudspeaker, improves the overall projection and optimizes the polyphonic balance by placing the woodwinds in front on the right and the trumpets in the back, low mouthpiece, so that they do not “pierce” the sound mass.
There are consequences to all this, since Bernhard Forck and his accomplices use all these parameters in a great musical kaleidoscope. Thus, in Lodoiska of Cherubini or the 1D Symphony by Méhul, certain pianissimos in the beginnings of the phrases of the violins are exactly adapted to the vibrations of the skin of the timpani in a kind of textured quivering. All this is of the most eminent subtlety. Yes ! we were at this level of research and digging, including in the 5e by Beethoven, including the 2e movement was stunning, thanks, among other things, to an exceptional cello section.
Themes
A final happy element with Akamus, unlike other musicians, baroque (Gardiner) or not (Rattle), is that this orchestra makes music, organically, in the collective joy and at the service of the composers, without ever seeking to demonstrate anything, without trying to tell us “look how right I am” or “listen to what I unearthed in the score”. A musical logic imposes itself naturally, thus in the opening CoriolanusSunday, where you never wondered if the 2e theme (figuring the complaint of General Coriolanus’ wife to make him relent) should be up-tempo or slow down: he was “right”.
On Saturday and Sunday, Akamus continued the momentum of intelligent associations inaugurated by the Bonapartist-themed combination of the Heroic with the Symphony for Peace from Wranitzky on Friday. Saturday, the 1D Symphony de Méhul was associated with the 5e Symphony by Beethoven. Schumann noted the striking resemblance of the 4e movement of Méhul with the 1er Beethoven movement. Yet the strictly parallel composition dates make it theoretically impossible that either could have drawn inspiration from his colleague.
It is quite different with Justin Heinrich Knecht, whose program of Musical portrait of nature clearly inspired Beethoven, who sublimated and universalized the subject (Knecht paints, Beethoven expresses the impressions felt by the painting) in his Pastoral.
Throughout the three concerts, the fundamental qualities were constant, but that of Sunday (Knecht-Pastoral) was a little less perfect in terms of execution: the mayonnaise didn’t take right away at the start of Knecht, everyone finding themselves fully together during the storm, and Forck did not particularly shine during his two solos of the “Nature transported with joy”. We also heard a little flute skid in the 2e movement of the Pastoralbut much less important than the quality of the phrasing and string textures throughout the work.
It was a great meeting. The Festival de Lanaudière, which is regaining its brilliance, promises us more.
Lanaudiere Festival
Beethoven weekend (concerts 2 and 3). Cherubini: Lodoiska, opening. Mehul: Symphony No. 1. Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 (Saturday). Beethoven: Coriolanus, opening. Knecht: The musical portrait of nature. Beethoven: Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”. Akamus, Bernhard Forck (lead violin and conductor). Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lindsay, Lanaudière, Saturday July 16 and Sunday July 17, 2022.