San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

'Heroic' Beethoven program breathes fire into reborn symphony




By Mike Greenberg

from the San Antonio Express News 10/3/98



It is somehow apt that the San Antonio Symphony, nearly given up for dead just a few days ago, has revived it self with an all-Beethoven program, the first of a monthlong "festival" of Beethoven concerts.

The very name "Beethoven," like much of his music, conjures images of heroic struggle and triumph over adversity.

This orchestra certainly knows what that's all about. The audience at Friday night's rebirth showed its support: Concertmaster Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio and the orchestra were greeted with cheers and a standing ovation.

Music director Christopher Wilkins, too, acknowledged the importance of the orchestra's return.

"Not only are we back, but we're back strong," Wilkins told the audience. "I'm proud to say that San Antonio has put itself firmly in the company of cities that think classical music is an indespensible component of civil life."

The program held two works from early in Beethoven's "heroic" period, the overture to the ballet "Creatures of Prometheus" (1801) and the Piano Concerto No. 3 (1800), followed by the exuberant Symphony No. 8 from 1812.

Each generation needs to discover Beethoven anew, and that is what young pianist Max Levinson did in the concerto. This was an interpretation very much of our own time, and constantly interesting.

Levinson's crystalline touch and delicate runs downplayed the heroic aspects of this music, which shares its tonality with such heavy statements as the Fifth Symphony and the funeral march of the Third.

But just when one began to think this might be Beethoven Lite, Levinson's generous tempo play and highly personal phrasing in the cadenza of the first movement brought Rachmaninoff and Chopin to mind - and Liszt, in Levinson's incredibly diaphanous runs in the slow movement.

This was Beethoven filtered through Levinson's experience of all music, without stylistic prejudices. Post-modern Beethoven.

Wilkins' account of the Eighth Symphony, by contrast, was rooted in the Beethoven tradition, but no less contemporary for that.

Here was everything one expects from Beethoven, but at higher resolution - more cleanly articulateed, more sharply focused, more buoyant in its rhythms. The first movement's dogfight, where the mood darkens into the minor and grows stormy, was delivered with rare intensity and drama.

Throughout the evening, ensemble precision wasn't all it should have been, but no farther off the mark than usual for the first concert after the summer hiatus.

The program repeats tonight at 8 p.m. in the Majestic Theater.



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