Beethoven: Ballet, Incidental, Vocal, and Choral Music

 

No, I am not going to cover the entire Naxos Beethoven 'door-stop' Edition. I did recently go through the individual recordings Leif Segerstam and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra made of Beethoven's ballet music, incidental music, and choral music.

These may not be the main interest listeners have when digging into Beethoven. The symphonies, piano concertos, violin concerto, triple concerto, and piano sonatas will probably be the first on everyone's mind. Yet, I wanted to see how Segerstam fared covering these specific stage genres in Beethoven's oeuvre.

I would say OK at best. Finnish conductor Leif Segerstam has some wonderful qualities, and others which irk, as it is with any musician. Segerstam has a wonderful way in developing a gorgeous string sound in orchestras he leads, and that fine quality is apparent in Turku. The best display of those skills come out in The Creatures of Prometheus, Beethoven's single ballet score.

That performance of Creatures is an easy segue to one of Segerstam's frustrating qualities; broad tempos. Never is the Finnish conductor in any undue hurry. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. In Creatures his purposeful pacing works beautifully, betraying the need to speed through every Classical Era's composer in modern musical performance trends. Turku is luscious and full, and Segerstam shapes the music exquisitely.

Of the six recordings I listened to, three were major pieces of incidental music. Segerstam adds the complete concert narration to complement Beethoven's music in these recordings as well. Narration is par for the course in Egmont on record, but is hardly ever seen or heard in The Ruins of Athens or King Stephan. That makes these recordings special, although Marcus Bosch has since done his own performances in 'period' style on CPO.

A team of German-speaking actors was brought in for the incidental music, and they do their best work in King Stephan, ably showcasing that character as an inimitable leader with a positive code of ethics. In The Ruins of Athens, the story just isn't as interesting, I think, thus the actors merely offer an adequate portrayal alongside the music, besides Roland Astor, whose Old Man is charmingly characterful. Segerstam certainly doesn't out shine Karajan or Szell in Egmont, but is done well enough. Most of the narration in these three works are separately tracked, so if you would rather skip the speaking, that option is available for most of their spoken appearances. There are a few moments in each work where music and speaking are intertwined, but those are far and few between.

The other two recordings I heard were Beethoven's Mass in C Major and his Orchestral Songs. This leads me to this series' biggest inadequacy. The Cathedralis Aboensis is of regional talents as a chorus. Normally, such a thing would be fine, where I would praise the amateur singers' dedication and commitment to music in their community. But this is a global product competing with other similar global products. To spell it out bluntly, the sopranos do not have a great tone quality, a problem which is exacerbated because Beethoven writes his music for that section in their highest ranges over a long sustained period. Plus, the balances of the entire ensemble aren't great and the tuning can be suspect. For me, Segerstam's Mass in C recording was a non-starter, simply due to the chorus and the conductor's plodding tempos.

Luckily, Segerstam brings in the Key Ensemble for King Stephan and the Cantata On The Accession Of Emperor Leopold II. This smaller chamber choir is a more cohesive singing group, and is greatly appreciated when they arrive. I did not pursue Segerstam's recordings of Christ on the Mount of Olives and the early Cantata On The Death Of Emperor Joseph II just for this reason of choral contributions. Instead, I chose other recordings, but may come back to finish off Segerstam's set for Naxos. On a positive note, each recording comes with a bushel-basketful of individual choral pieces, vocal numbers, and orchestral incidental music offerings alongside the main works, many of which can be hard to find on record.

With the exception of Beethoven's ballet, all of the works call for chorus and vocal soloists. I already mentioned my problem with the choir, but there is also the matter of the soloists. Kaisa Ranta does a really nice job in Egmont, as does Juha Kotilainen in Ruins and Stephan. Minor singers come and go with expectedly various qualities, but what Segerstam sees in Finnish soprano Reetta Haavisto is beyond me. Perhaps her huge, heavily-draped vocal quality is enjoyable for some, but I find her vibrato much too wide, so much so as to blur the notes she is singing, with little to no subtlety in her approach to Beethoven's music. She appears in four of her own arias in Naxos' Orchestral Songs release, where Segerstam drags her songs too much as well. Fortunately, it works out better for Kevin Greenlaw and Dan Karlström on the same recording, with all three singers amiably coming together for a few songs at the end of the program.

So my distinct feeling is to give these recordings as a whole a pass. There are too many attributes which weigh down the proceedings. If I were to hold on to individual recordings, it would be The Creatures of Prometheus and King Stephan. The one which goes straight to the bin is the Mass in C Major; too slow with regional choral contributions. The rest end up somewhere in the middle, plus I still have yet to visit two further recordings in this series. Thankfully, the Turku PO is consistently easy to listen to.

Will such a judgement spoil the entire Naxos Complete Beethoven Edition box? Surely not. There is so much music in that behemoth to please every sort of listener, I would guess. More than a lifetime's worth.