A NINTH OF CLASSIC PRECISION: THE IMPRESSIVE VERONESE DEBUT OF MAESTRO BROTT. THE ARENA CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA FULLY INTEGRATED.

December 24, 2007

Cesare Galla
As appeared in the newspaper ARENA, Verona, Italy

The monumental complexity of Beethoven's Ninth has always constituted an enormous challenge in terms of both interpretation and performance. A Canadian conductor, Boris Brott, has been invited to make his debut in Verona on the occasion of the return of the Ninth to the symphonic season of the Fondazione Arena. This Christmas concert was rather different than the usual ones and it took place yesterday and the night before in a very nearly sold out Philharmonic Hall.

Brott's reading of the Ninth was a most notable and interesting one. It shone through the sharply focussed and solidly projected orchestral sound of the Arena Orchestra. Setting aside any temptation to indulge in late Romantic grandiloquent rhetoric, thisconductor focussed instead on a limpid analysis of the score that reveals, through the clarity of phrasing and dynamics, the complexity of its counterpoint and underlines its structure without ever losing sight of the whole.

The result was a performance of classic precision, compact in its sound and yet carefully detailed, and absolutely correct in the choice of tempi. Particularly worth singling out was the splendid sostenuto of the double basses and cellos in the recitative that precedes the Hymn to Joy.

It was a performance of thoughtful depth in the slow movements, articulating an intensely dramatic declamation in the first of them, and yet capable of opening up dreamy and poetic vistas in the Adagio, while providing a great timbric clarity in the fast tempi. The earth-shaking Scherzo, suggestive and incisive at the same time, was particularly worthy of note. The theatrically extrovert Finale was meditated and controlled, avoiding completely the risk of bathos after the dramatic entrance of the soloists and chorus. The latter was supple, generally homogeneous, clear in its attacks. The quartet composed of Anna Katharina Behnke, Annely Peebo, Kurt Azesberger and Manfred Hemm provided stylistic assurance, although it was not always impeccable when it came to colouring and precision.

At the end, there was prolonged applause and there were repeated calls to the proscenium.

(Translated by Dr. Gabriele Erasmi)

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