Week 5: At the Premiere of Beethoven’s First Symphony

This evening’s ritual begins with yet another record. I open up the box and choose the one in front. I know what must be done, but fear for the beginning, end and purpose. Regardless, it’s a journey I undertake with joy. I know now that the world each plate contains is so much richer in more than just its sound. An hour of writing while playing through the tracks feels like a journey beyond price and time. And if it’s a tribute to my dear uncle, then what better way than with music he loved.

The album is old, yellowing brown, with a black and white face staring back in the dark. It’s split at the seams and I make a small mental note to purchase some glue to repair its edges. The photo on the cover must be a shot of Bruno Walter who is conducting the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York for this performance of Beethoven’s Symphony №5 in C Minor and Symphony №1 in C Major. Aha! This I know! Well, not the first symphony, I’m afraid, but definitely the famous fifth. Ta-da-da-dum! I wonder which one I should start with? I guess I shall start with the first.

I take the record out of its plastic sleeve, carefully place it on the glass platter of my Rega, and lower the arm down with the cueing lift. Before I descend into a realm which awaits me, I sit on the floor with the cover in hands, reviewing the liner notes with awe and respect. I know that in the digital age of information there’s almost too much on each specific topic, and yet, with the music that we stream or play from our phones today, you won’t find words attending to the subject. Perhaps there is a write-up or two published on the net, but what about the details of a particular recording? A tale of its birth?

In this case, I learn that Bruno Walter is one of the “greatest of living orchestral conductors and is universally known as one of the supreme interpreters of Beethoven’s music.” OK, so I’m in great hands here. Although the part on “living” slightly disturbs me as I remind myself that everyone on the record is dead. The players and producers, maestro and, of course, the great composer himself. This record, after all, was pressed sometime in the early 60s, or so I gather from its mono grooves.

I read up on Beethoven, and picture him living in Vienna, in 1792, after leaving his hometown of Bonn amid the rumours of the war with France. His father has recently died. And so has Mozart. And thus, under Joseph Haydn’s direction, Beethoven sought to master counterpoint. “He was twenty-two and a singularly unprepossessing young man. His face was pockmarked, his features heavy and coarse and their expression lowering. His voice was unpleasant and he spoke like a peasant. Manners he had none — quite the contrary, he was crude and boorish.”

It seemed, however, that the Viennese aristocracy took him under their wing in spite of his low form, with none other than Prince Lichnowsky himself (a Chamberlain of the Austrian court and a great patron of the arts and music) hosting his stay at the palace, where he was treated like a son instead of a lodger. “And should Beethoven happen to ring for a servant at the same time,” he once had said, “Beethoven’s bell was to be answered first.” Beethoven thus became a de facto nobility within the musical world of Vienna, long before he ventured to give the first concert for his own benefit. And this is where his first symphony premiered.

I received my invitation just a week before. I was a freelance correspondent, living at the time in Munich, and my dear friend Friedrich Rochlitz wanted to cover the concert for his flourishing general music newspaper, or as it was known in Leipzig, “Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.” It was the beginning of a cold and rainy April, the frozen grasslands slowly melt by the dirty road to Wien. I found the day-long trip by carriage dreadful and feared that my leg would give me trouble on the way. The symphony was to be played in K.K. Hoftheater nächst der Burg with the maestro in attendance. But I have heard that Paul Wranitzky would conduct the royal theatre in his stead. Having arrived and washed at my hotel near the theatre, I took a sluggish stroll to admire the architecture.

This theatre has always impressed me. It had a beautiful and ornate facade with the busts of famous playwrights, and marble figures for the symbols of human emotions as they appeared in the many plays. At the top, the God Apollo held a court with the Muse of Tragedy and Muse of Comedy on both his sides. Inside, there was a wide and lengthy foyer, with tapestries and carpets on the floor, and paintings on the walls and soaring ceilings. A great space for an opera, my observations told me, but how would it hold up to a symphonic piece?

I took the box allotted to the press. The orchestra has entered from behind the curtains and Paul Wranitzky opened up the concert with a Septet. After a piano concerto, also by Beethoven, we finally got to hear the Symphony in C Major. I found the Adagio a little lacking, the strings a bit too thin, the horns too loud. The Minuetto felt a tad too rushed (he might as well have called it Scherzo for the part). And the finale, well, it felt a lot like Haydn. But maybe I must hear this thing again. It was indeed abundant in ideas, and very much original in thought, but with the emphasis on all the orchestration for the wind parts the music felt as if composer targeted a band.

Perhaps I wasn’t in the spirit after all the travels. Or, it was rumoured, that the orchestra did not take well to Paul Wranitzky well, and so they simply played with fear, awe, and dread. Either way, during the intermezzo of the concert, I found myself pacing outside the Burgtheater with a smoking pipe in hand.

“What are you doing here?” said the woman’s voice. “You don’t belong here. He will find you.”

“I beg your pardon,” I raised my stovepipe hat, “I know not what you mean,” I bowed. The early April snow has stuck to her uncommon shortened hair.

“You must not come or he will must not come or he will must not come or he will must not come or he will must not come or he will…” The needle skipped mid-movement on grit and dirt. I found myself in gaze and in my kitchen and alone. The hat, invisible, protruding in my hand. The music, like a prisoner, mid-passage. The falling snow- a remnant of my dream. I lift up the needle from the groove and place the tonearm back onto its rest.

So she has found me after all… and now she has conveyed a warning or a sign. Who is that “he” that she so urgently alerted? And why should I not go where I belong?

ᚱ.