Richard Tognetti and the ACO pay a stripped back tribute to the genius of Beethoven

While the coronavirus has put the kybosh on productions celebrating Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, Richard Tognetti and his band have completed the circle with their latest concert.

Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra performing in the Beethoven 250 concert at the City Recital Hall. Picture: Nic Walker

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While the coronavirus has put the kybosh on myriad concerts and productions celebrating Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, Richard Tognetti and his band have managed to complete the circle with their latest concert.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra launched its 2020 subscription series in February with performances of the first three symphonies and now, after eight months of closed concert halls, Beethoven 250, albeit stripped back and with audiences limited to one-third capacity, lowers the curtain on the season.

Originally planned as six works marking 50 year “signposts” from 1770 – the year of his birth – to 2020, the COVID-safe policy of one-hour concerts without interval meant that works by Mozart, Johann Strauss II and George Crumb, had to be ditched, leaving concertgoers with a Readers Digest version.

And actually, it is a very good read, starting off in 1820 with an orchestral arrangement of Schubert’s Quartettsatz, an early string quartet movement which he abandoned, and ending in the Year of COVID with the world premiere of Stride, by UK/US composer Anna Clyne inspired by Beethoven’s Pathetique piano sonata.

CONTRASTS

The year 1820 was not a good one for Schubert. He was arrested on suspicion of being a revolutionary and the woman he loved fell for another man and some of this turbulence seeps into his exquisite single movement work. Tognetti and his 15 socially distanced colleagues brought out the contrasts between the lovely singing melody and the sudden anger of the tremolo passages.

One hundred years on and Ralph Vaughan Williams used a form Beethoven made popular – a Romance for violin – when he composed his much-loved The Lark Ascending. Long a favourite of the ACO, this highlighted the orchestra’s charismatic frontman Tognetti, who is celebrating 30 years at the helm.

His fine touch, sweet tone and spot-on intonation were showcased in the two trilling and soaring cadenzas which open and close this piece, backed by some sumptuous work from the orchestra in the lush, folk song-inflected inner movements.

One would hear something familiar only for it to skitter off on another path

Clyne, who was commissioned by the ACO to join their Beethoven celebration, was inspired by the octave leaps in the left hand of the opening movement of the Pathetique and uses snatches of themes from the three movements in her tonal and approachable 12-minute tribute work. The switches of mood and tonality work very well – one would hear something familiar only for it to skitter off on another path, perhaps with some stabbing bowing reminiscent of Bernard Hermann score for Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Two other ACO warhorses – Tognetti’s arrangements Beethoven’s Cavatina from the String Quartet No. 13, and the Grosse Fuge – both works that seem to make time stand still, brought this celebration of genius to a fitting close.

The concert will be repeated at City Recital Hall on Sunday, November 15, at 2pm; Tuesday, November 17, at 8pm; Wednesday, November 18, at 7pm; Thursday, November 19, at 7pm, and Friday, November 20, at 1.30pm and 7pm.

DETAILS

● CONCERT Australian Chamber Orchestra: Beethoven 250

● WHERE City Recital Hall Angel Place

● WHEN Saturday, November 14