Beethoven Ninth and Utopian Brotherhood at the Bowl
/By Truman C. Wang
9/3/2022
Photo credit: L.A. Phil
Icelandic conductor Eva Ollikainen
After Dudamel’s titanic Beethoven Ninth in May at the Disney Hall, which achieved an intensity and ferocity in the choral finale equaled only by Wilhelm Furtwängler in his legendary live recordings, this Ninth on September 1 was a comparatively laid-back affair. Maestro Eva Ollikainen, from Iceland (which is about as icy as Greenland is green), quite understated in the first allegro and scherzo, replacing much of the fire and drama with crisp direction, lucid phrasing and superb playing from the L.A. Phil musicians (although horn intonation was suspect in a few places.) It wasn’t until the third movement adagio when one began to see her long vision of the piece: a symphonic celebration for which the choral finale serves as a necessary and inevitable culmination. The L.A. Master Chorale keenly responded to that vision, giving an ecstatic performance that I would not soon forget.
Bass-baritone Nathan Berg brought a tone of regretful admonishment to his opening solo (from “Oh Freunde” to “Freude! Freude!” which was written by Beethoven, not Goethe). Soprano Michelle Bradley also stood out with her strong spinto voice and memorable final leap to the D natural on the cadence of the final quartet. Mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb and tenor Joshua Blue completed this fine quartet of soloists.
Samy Moussa’s Elysium (U.S. premiere) made a fitting companion piece to the mighty Beethoven Ninth, echoing these words from the chorale finale “Elysium… [where] all men shall become brothers”. Its complex, ever-shifting harmonies and sonorities suggest perhaps the uneasy struggle to achieve this Utopian Elysium in our highly polarized societies today.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.