Australian Haydn Ensemble takes on stripped down Beethoven’s mighty Fifth Symphony

The Australian Haydn Ensemble continue their survey of stripped down versions of Beethoven symphonies with the mighty Fifth.

The Australian Haydn Ensemble performing the chamber version of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Picture: Oliver Miller

• The Emperor gets old clothes from fortepiano virtuoso
• Ghost of Beethoven haunts conductor’s big debut
• Piano maestro back triumphantly after five-year wait
• Osmo’s night of Sibelius strong to the Finnish

Making chamber versions of major orchestral works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven was a flourishing industry in the 18th and 19th centuries. The benefits were twofold – it brought the composer’s music to a wider audience and it enabled amateur players to try it out in the comfort of their homes.

The Australian Haydn Ensemble has tackled some of these stripped down arrangements in the 11 years since they were formed and continue their survey of Beethoven symphonies in their latest tour. Last year they brought us a magnificent Seventh and this year it’s the turn of the most famous one of them all, the fabulous Fifth with its signature four note opening.

I was lucky enough to hear their performance of the Seventh featuring two violins, two violas, cello and double bass and the lone flute of Melissa Farrow filling in for the woodwind and brass sections. Scottish violinist William Watts, who was secretary of Regency London’s Philharmonic Society, made an arrangement of the Fifth Symphony using the same configuration, and the result is surprising powerful and dramatic if you forget Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Led by artistic director Skye McIntosh, the septet were in top form and fully captured Beethoven’s heroic struggle in which joy and positivity triumph – a feeling the audience badly needed with all the political horrors going on in the world at the moment.

There were some changes in personnel from last year with Jessica Lee on flute, former ACO regular Nicole Divall joining fellow American Karina Schmitz on viola and Pippa Macmillan, on leave of absence from Canada’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, on double bass.

The chamber setting gives a transparency to how the four movements are put together so, for a work as familiar as this, it is as if we hear it afresh. The seven musicians captured all the drama and heroic struggle of the full-blown original and brought the audience to its feet.

Australian Haydn Ensemble performing Beethoven's 5th. Picture: Oliver Miller

The evening started with strumming guitars, rattling drums and a whiff of paella cooking in the kitchen. Italian composer Luigi Boccherini spent most of his working life in Spain and his string quintet Night music of the streets of Madrid gives a colourful and dramatic 18th century account of what you might hear outside your window – church bells and hymns, calls of beggars in the street, itinerant musicians (cellist Daniel Yeadon strumming his instrument on its side like a guitar) and the night watch dealing with a riot before curfew.

Matthew Greco on second violin brought a nice touch of humour with some extravagant bariolage (and a little dance and bow) in the Passacaglia of the Street Singers movement and Yeadon’s cello led the beautiful slow Rosary section. The gutsy, melodic Retreat made for an effective finale fade-out as the soldiers marched away.

Ferdinand Ries is best remembered as Beethoven’s student and biographer, but he was also a composer and thanks to several recent recordings his prolific works across most genres are becoming known to today’s audiences. Working in London with the Philharmonic Society he promoted his master’s works and organised commissions – including the Ninth Symphony – as well as writing his own pieces and performing as a pianist.

His Symphony No. 3, composed in 1816, is one of his most successful orchestral works and he made his own arrangement of it for septet. It shows the influence of the great man but Ries has his own voice – even though Beethoven unkindly criticised him for imitating him.

McIntosh and her players brought out the work’s elegance, attractive melodies and fine counterpoint. In all it made a brilliant curtain-raiser to Beethoven’s great triumph of the human spirit that followed after the interval.

DETAILS

• CONCERT Australian Haydn Ensemble: Beethoven’s Fifth

• WHERE City Recital Hall

• WHEN June 30, 2024