Spirited and tender Beethoven Concerti

Beethoven: Triple Concerto, Piano Concerto no. 0

In 1964, the writer George Plimpton wrote Paper Lion, about his time in the training camp of the Detroit Lions. His jersey bore the number "0". In his first time playing before a crowd, he quarterbacked the 1st-string Lions Offence against the 1st-string Defence. After three plays he was back on his own one yard-line, "just a yard away from the complete humiliation of having moved a team backward from the 20-yard line to a safety."

George Plimpton, #0, with Joe Schmidt, by Walter Iooss, Jr.

"I did not take my helmet off when I reached the bench. It was painful to do—wrenching it past my ears—and there was security in having it on. I was conscious of the big zero on my back facing the crowd when I sat down."

I was certainly conscious of the big zero in the title of the Beethoven Piano Concerto no. 0, WoO 4. The composer was only 14 when he wrote it, in 1784. But this is by no means an amateur piece; rather, it's a creditable effort in the galante style of the time. It's not badly constructed, though the themes are mainly pedestrian, it's flashily rather than organically virtuosic, & it runs a bit long. What it does have in common with George Plimpton's experience is the same against-all-appearances optimism and good humour. This isn't the grumpy composer of later years, but a youthful, exuberant Beethoven. Pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva is careful not to make too big a meal of this music, letting the odd flash of fast-forward felicity speak for itself rather than underlining it. Meanwhile, Vahan Mardirossian conducts with a properly light touch. The musicians make as good a case as possible for this work, giving us a glimpse of a great artist in his early days.

The Triple Concerto, for Violin, Viola and Cello, Op. 56, is from Beethoven's middle period; he wrote it in 1803. It's the least successful of Beethoven's mature concertos, partly because of balance issues and a too-long opening movement, but there are many nice touches. These include more than a few stirring passages for the three solo instruments, and Lusiné Harutyunyan on violin, Benedict Kloeckner on cello and Ekaterina Litvintseva on piano are each impressive as they take their turns to shine. The role of the orchestra was developed to a new extent by Beethoven in this work, much like his Third Piano Concerto which he had just completed, and the musicians of the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen work together as a virtuosic group, in music that's by turns spirited, tender, passionate and ironic.

A touchdown, with a two-point conversion.

Here's the first movement of the Piano Concerto no. 0: