Legends: Mozart & Beethoven

Masaaki Suzuki is a renowned authority on Bach’s works and on Friday he demonstrated how to apply his expertise to other classical titans. Suzuki achieved this in such a way that his Bach was as beautiful as we would expect and the Mozart and Beethoven were comfortingly familiar and refreshingly new all at once.

The stage was set, literally, for a Baroque performance. Throughout the evening, Suzuki used his impressive command of dynamics, tempo, and tone to bring forward individual parts so clearly it was almost as if they were under an actual spotlight for a few moments before melting back into the lustrous sound of the whole. Each movement of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 was made distinctively different by interpretation and performance, but a lightness and fluidity flowed throughout.

The same lightness continued into Mozart’s Symphony No. 25. The delicacy of the first and second movements, almost exposing every instrumentalist, felt as intimate as a Viennese salon in Mozart’s day although it was a full house of several thousand. The final movement had a bolder sound. Even as the speed and intensity increased, Suzuki’s amazing control over the dynamics compelled us forward without ever being heavy footed.

The hero of the hour was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Eroica. Suzuki introduced us to a new interpretation of Beethoven that sounded as dramatic and original as it might have seemed to its first audiences while retaining the lightness and fluidity we were introduced to in the Bach. The second movement in particular had an intensity unique to the character of the movement, with harmonic drama and serious emphasis on tone. The third and fourth movements emphasised the unusual. The complex rhythm and unexpected dynamics combined the modernity of Beethoven with the Baroque mode and left us knowing we had heard something old and well celebrated now also new and remarkable.