Murray Perahia leads a titanic program of Beethoven

By Truman C. Wang
Friday, October 31, 2003

The Academy of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields

MURRAY PERAHIA, pianist/conductor

Friday, October 31, 2003  at Segerstrom Hall, Orange County Performing Arts Center

COSTA MESA, CA – Despite the last-minute changes in the program, replacing Haydn’s “Oxford” Symphony with the esoteric Op. 127 String Quartet by Beethoven, and the Third piano concerto with the Fifth, the Friday night concert by England’s finest chamber orchestra was riveting from beginning to end for its high drama and musicianship.

The Academy of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields also has the unique distinction of being the most recorded orchestra in history, with well over 700 entries in the latest Schwann catalog.  The agile, polished strings, the mellifluous winds, the absolute precision of ensemble playing – all are the Academy’s trademarks and amply demonstrated in last Friday night’s concert.

Having heard the orchestrated version of Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue just last week in Pasadena, I wasn’t really keen on hearing yet another orchestration of a Beethoven quartet.  But surprise!  The E-flat major Quartet lends itself better to orchestration than the Grosse Fugue.  The great spirituality of the Adagio, far from being diluted by the added chorus of strings, gains extra power and intensity in the new treatment.  The long, mystical journey to heaven that Beethoven envisioned late in life was perfectly realized in the Academy’s playing, under the baton of Murray Perahia.

In his capacity as a conductor, maestro Perahia is much like his predecessor Sir Neville Marriner, who founded the Academy in 1959 and quickly established it as one of the world’s premier musical ensembles.  Like Sir Neville, Perahia’s approach was unfussy and straightforward, always keeping a natural flow and a rhythmic pulse on the music.

However, it was as a pianist that Mr. Perahia truly shone, in Beethoven’s E-flat major Piano Concerto No. 5, popularly known as the “Emperor” for its grandiose, maestoso, opening flourishes on the piano.  After winning the 1972 Leeds triennial international piano competition, Murray Perahia went on to become a celebrated interpreter of the works of Classical composers – Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn – and, lately, J.S. Bach.  Unlike many young pianists today, Mr Perahia prefers grace to flashiness, poetry to pianistic fireworks.  The absolute evenness of scales, the lyrical singing tone, the finely judged rubato marked his playing of the “Emperor” concerto.  The irrepressible joy contained in the modulated passage leading to the final Rondo brought a big smile on my face (and those of many Academy musicians).  Mr. Perahia is that rare pianist who is rhythmically scrupulous, yet at the same time wonderfully free and imaginative with the way the notes are released and colored.

There were no encores – which would have served as an anticlimax after the titanic performance of the “Emperor” concerto.

Kudos for the Academy and Mr. Perahia for the best concert of the year in Orange County.

For tickets to other Philharmonic Society concerts, call (949) 553-2422 or visit online www.philharmonicsociety.org

 

Truman C. Wang is editor of Classical Voice.

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