LUIS DIAS
A happy happenstance allowed me to hear three Beethoven works (two orchestral and one chamber) in the ‘tragic’ key of C minor in two cities, Bengaluru and Mumbai, in as many days. The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) Mumbai, in anticipation of Ludwing van Beethoven’s 200th death anniversary next year, has embarked on an am bitious project in its beloved Arties festival: to perform the entire cycle of the great composer’s sixteen string quartets spread across a pe riod of four months, spanning both 2026 and 2027. It began earlier this month, and I had booked much in advance the concert on Sunday, May 24, featuring Beethoven’s string quartet number 4 in C minor, Opus 18. But then our son success fully auditioned (cello) for the week-long SASO (South Asian Symphony Orchestra) workshop in Bengaluru, with the end-of-workshop concert featuring SASO faculty and workshop participants under the baton of Indian-origin conductor Alvin Arumugam on Saturday 23 May. As luck would have it, the programme featured Beethoven’s ‘Cori olan’ overture and his Third Piano Concerto, both in C minor.
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C minor is a key “that Bee thoven associated with pa thos, struggle, and expressive urgency, reserved for his most dramatic music,” in the words of Paul Schiavo, a prominent writer on classical music. Many authorities have written of Beethoven’s “C minor mood.” Professor of Music Henry Wyatt notes that while for Mozart this key had “aspects of sublimi ty: melancholy, terror, other worldliness,” that Beethoven “however, used C minor as a stormy, heroic tonality.” American pianist and mu sic critic Charles Rosen con curred: “Beethoven in C mi nor has come to symbolise his artistic character. In every case, it reveals Beethoven as a Hero. C minor does not show Beethoven at his most sub tle, but it does give him to us in his most extrovert form, where he seems to be most impatient of any compro mise.” Of the three works I lis tened to, two were composed around the same period: the string quartet between 1798 and 1800, and the Piano Con certo in 1800; while the Cori olan overture was written in 1807. I played second violin when the London-based Corinthi an Chamber Orchestra per formed the Coriolan overture in the early 200s, so having my son play it in Bengaluru in the cello section a quar ter-century later was quite an emotional, proud moment for me. Beethoven wrote the over ture to Heinrich Joseph von Collin’s eponymous tragic play. Although Wyatt had pri marily Beethoven’s ground breaking Fifth Symphony in mind when he wrote of the “stormy heroic tonality” of C minor in Beethoven’s music, it applies just as perfectly to the play’s tragic hero Corio lan, better known to most of us as ‘Coriolanus’ from Shake speare’s play of that name.
Shakespeare’s ‘Coriolanus’ re-entered public conscious ness in 2011 through the film adaptation with a stellar cast including Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler and Vanessa Redgrave. Beethoven’s overture is an eight-minute stroke of genius, encapsulating the whole trag ic story in this short span. He dispenses with any perfunc tory introduction and launch es headlong into the drama of it all: three energetic Cs build up and erupt with great ma levolence into thunderclap chords. The main C minor theme with its strategic paus es, the inexorable crescen dos beginning from virtually nothing to full-blown fortes in sometimes just two measures, only to drop off the precipice in subito pianos brilliantly portray a man wronged and about to unleash vengeance on a titanic scale; this is off set by a sublime theme in E flat major representing his mother intervening on behalf of Rome, of peace, and of san ity. The lurching forward pro pulsion in the lower strings borders on the methodically manic, almost sweeping aside the ‘mother’ theme until it ‘runs out of steam’, depicting Coriolanus’ anger dissipating as he listens to reason, but si multaneously sealing his own fate.
The piano score to Bee thoven’s Third Piano Concer to was incomplete at its first performance according to his friend Ignaz von Seyfied, who was his page-turner that day: “ I saw almost nothing but empty pages; at the most, on one page or another a few Egyptian hieroglyphs whol ly unintelligible to me were scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all the solo part from memory since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to set it all down on paper.” British musicologist Sir Donal Tovey said this con certo “is one of the works in which we most clearly see the style of [Beethoven’s] first pe riod preparing to develop into that of his second.” The sec ond introspective movement (Largo) in the ‘remote’ key of E major particularly points to the future. Goan-origin pianist Gavin Martin played this concerto in 1984 during the India tour of the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Beethoven’s Opus 18 num ber 4 string quartet is the only one among his sixteen in C minor. One of his ‘early period’ works, it looks back to Haydn, but the dramatic tension in the first and third movements, the wit in the sec ond, already have his stamp.
The last movement sounds (to my ears) as if it could have been ‘inspired’ (but in a minor key) by the last move ment (Rondo all’Ongarese: Presto) of Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 39 in G major, Hob. XV/25, written five years earlier in 1795. It is frustrating that Goa lags so far behind other states both in terms of music edu cation initiatives or high-cal ibre concerts such as these. The SASO initiative could and should be happening in Goa too, but does anyone care? When was the last time we had a Beethoven string quar tet performance here? All Goa seems to care about is “anoth er Messiah in another church”, rave reviews by chamchas and press publicity, instead of supporting music education and a meaningful concert cal endar. Goa’s reputation now precedes (as I myself heard in both cities) as a destination not even worth exploring by performers or impresarios because “Goans don’t come to classical concerts”, especially when they have to put their money where their collective mouth is. (Dr. Luis Dias is a physi cian, musician, writer and founder of Child’s Play India Foundation. He blogs at luisdias.wordpress.com)
