New York Classical Review

Music from the past remains relevant to the present, and revolutionary music remains so, permanently. One such piece is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” which the New York Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel played to open Thursday night’s concert in David Geffen Hall. It was kept good company by another, more recent masterpiece of revolutionary music, Fred Rzewski’s The People United Will Never be Defeated!, in the world premiere of an orchestrated version commissioned by the Phil from from eighteen different composers. It was a remarkable evening.

The “Eroica” symphony has a political background, as does Rzewski’s masterful work. Beethoven famously dedicated it to Napoleon, than violently erased his name when the French general crowned himself emperor. This wasn’t mere hero worship, Beethoven was a dedicated anti-monarchist and his revolutionary politics drove the musical revolution of Symphony No. 3. On the night of its premiere in 1805, the romantic era in music began.

More than just how notes work together, the “Eroica” is the sound of Beethoven’s personality, his feelings and values. The thrill of these came through in an excellent performance. On the eve of Dudamel taking up his official music director position, the combination of ensemble and conductor are working together exactly as one would hope, not just in sync but with the energy and expressive force of people who want to make music together.

This was a superbly crisp interpretation in the contemporary style of a modern orchestra playing with the sharp articulation and lean, fleet ideas that came out of period performance practice. Dudamel’s tempos felt perfect throughout, the emphasis was on clarity—one heard discrete and small transitional and preparatory ideas that are usually hidden—and choosing judicious moments for highlighting.

The opening movement had the kind of effortless flow that built its own tension to the dissonant chords in the middle, then caught its breath and got going again. The funeral march built deep emotional power the same way, by simply accumulating meaning as it went along—with strong contrasts between the march tempo and the “Adagio.” One Dudamel touch came out in underlining the very last phrase. The scherzo flew along, and in the finale, Dudamel once again had a superb contrast between the different tempos. Perfect in a way, this was Beethoven alive and speaking.

Fifty years have passed since Ursula Oppens premiered Rzewski’s theme and variations on a Chilean anti-Pinochet protest song at the Kennedy Center in celebration of America’s Bicentennial. This orchestrated version struck the listener not simply as the same music for a variety of instruments but a new companion work altogether.

This version is shortened from the original thirty-six variations to twenty-four. With the size and variety of a full orchestra behind the notes, it has an understandably much heavier feeling than for piano, and the dimensions and impact of the opening theme, orchestrated by Andrew Norman, did take a moment to adapt to. 

The deepest change, though, is how the piece moved away from its political energy. This was probably inevitable—it’s always possible that someone could sit down at a piano, anywhere, and play this as a public and social statement, as Rzewski himself did on an upright piano at Wholey’s Fish Market in Pittsburgh in 2015. An orchestra in a concert hall is a completely different social context.

This is not necessarily bad, just different. In fact, the transformation is fascinating, rewarding, and moving. Even with so many different views of the orchestra—and the notes explain that the Philharmonic tried to group together composers with similar styles, like Joel Thompson and Maria Scheider through Variations 13-16—the result across the entirety was unexpectedly united, not the same but each composer was sympathetic enough to the others that the results felt like a whole.

Perhaps this was because, in some way, the composers were thinking about Rzewski’s place in history. The orchestration was full of details that connected to significant music and composers from the past: Norman’s Thema and Variation 1 had hints of both Kurt Weill and Webern; Roberto Sierra’s Variations 3 and 4 could have set next to Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra; with Conrad Tao, Kati Agócs, Arturo Márquez, Enrico Chapela, and others, there were gestures from Bernstein, Berlo’s Sinfonia, Shostakovich, Petrushka, and more.

What the orchestrations did was to take the brilliance—The People United is on par with the Goldberg and Diabelli Variations—of Rzewski’s composing and honor it and his place in history by connecting it with voices and from the past. This was fantastically marvelous, beautiful in a cultural sense. The return of the theme and final coda was handed to Jerod Impichchaachaahá Tate, and he gave it a sweeping, almost classically cinematic treatment, the sound full of sincere joy and appreciation. Rzewski lives.

This program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Tuesday. nyphil.org.