In a telling remark, Beethoven once commented to a questioner, “You do not understand my music because I am writing for another age.” Sure, in this day and age, Beethoven’s Ninth is over-used and over-played. Yet time, instead of trivializing this work, has somehow rendered the enlightenment message of joy and world harmony yet more powerful.
In a performance at First United Church of Oak Park on March 26, the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest, led by Music Director Jay Friedman, and Symphony Chorus, prepared by William Chin, made a solid case for the Ninth having come of age. The orchestra played to a packed house of old and young, with makeshift seating crowded in the rear and an over-flowing balcony.
Premiered in 1824 in Vienna, the Ninth Symphony went beyond mere music to proclaim social equality, the divine order of a loving Creator, and a near-supernatural joy. The universality and magnitude of this work far exceeded the bounds of the conventional symphony at the time. With a text by Friedrich Schiller, Beethoven shook up current sensibilities with a symphony nearly twice as long as the norm, involving performing forces that even today still seem gargantuan.
Beethoven’s political platform threatened the heart and soul of the class-conscious Hapsburg Empire. His consummate artistic manifesto about courage to reach for a magnificent, seemingly unattainable dream has become a rallying cry for political equality. Playing it at Tiananmen Square and in Leonard Bernstein’s performance at the celebration of a re-unified Germany are examples from the recent past.
Few community orchestras have the resources to mount the Ninth Symphony, given the challenges for both instrumentalists and singers, and the large number of performers required. As he has done on so many previous occasions, Jay Friedman led the ensemble with assurance. Perhaps even more compelling than hearing the familiar “warm-up” of Beethoven’s first few bars was seeing 170 performers take their places across the front of the church.
After the storms and threats of the first movement?#34;Beethoven’s representation of turmoil?#34;the orchestra settled into an invigorating pace in the second movement Scherzo. Friedman’s solid and relentless tempo created a magnetic sense of momentum. The music almost seemed to play itself. The orchestra should be justly proud of an exceptionally clean, well-balanced, and energetic reading, particularly in passages with incredible precision among the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn.
The gentle, laid-back lilt of the peaceful Adagio that followed belied the alarming wake-up call of the final movement. The five double bass players performed their signature “recitative” with one unified, stirring voice in a dialogue with the full orchestra’s snippets from earlier movements. Picking up on the “recitative” cue, baritone Lucas Harbour delivered the invitation to seek out “more joyful tones” in a rich and vibrant low register.
The voices of Yun-Ju Park, soprano; Amanda Tarver, mezzo; and Edwin Vega, tenor, were exceptionally well-balanced. Park’s shimmering tone color and sensitivity nicely topped off the four-part soli passages. The placement of the chorus in four separate enclaves surrounding the orchestra added intensity and a “surround-sound” impact. The chorus’s dynamic shading was notable, especially in the extremes of loud and soft that Beethoven specifies in the score.
Beethoven’s dream of world-wide harmony was inspiring in 1824, and today is even more so, considering that this orchestra and chorus were drawn from the rank and file of Oak Park. The rank and file are the very people whom Beethoven and Schiller so long ago summoned with the message of the magical power of joy.