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- Lugwig van Beethoven and Anton Bruckner
American Symphony Orchestra
Leon Botstein, Conductor
Sosnoff Auditorium, Fisher Hall, Bard College
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 3 in D Minor (1873 version, "The Wagner Symphony")
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major (“Eroica”)
One uses “memorable” sparingly, lest the older we get, and the further from the experience, the greater the potential for despair in our failing grasp of that memory’s vital immediacy. We might, with Wordsworth, bemoan “the glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore.” However, Saturday’s concert at Bard has been placed, albeit precariously, in my ever-reduced, non-volatile memory as a treasured event. Leon Botstein’s performance of Beethoven’s Eroica
was one of transcendent clarity, color, and musical balance. I believe the members of the American Symphony Orchestra were aware of how well they played, and how convincingly Mr. Botstein’s interpretation was executed. Given the reserve of Mr. Botstein’s thoughts regarding the first two Beethoven symphonies, performed earlier this fall, the question lingered as to how the quintessentially Romantic
Eroica would fare. Using an ensemble scaled to intended proportion, but without period instruments, this Third never lost a mote of its rhetorical vigor or sonic weight. While coloristic nuances abounded in the Funeral March, the sense of the tragic was never tilted, nor was it hyperbolized. The Scherzo was absolutely perfect, and the Finale’s variations were richly narrated, chameleon-like in their differentiation, and powerfully projected to the very end. It was difficult to sit without stirring in the rousing coda. Mr. Botstein and the ASO tonight have reached beyond regional, national, or temporal excellence.