Although the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven's birth won't arrive until 2020, George Lepauw isn't about to wait eight years to celebrate the German composer's titanic musical achievement, or the profound influence his music has exerted on the evolution of Western classical music.
Lepauw, a prodigious pianist who lives in Paris but maintains close ties to Chicago, along with hundreds of other participants from nearly a dozen countries, are honoring Beethoven in a big – nay, mammoth – way this week. Already in progress is the second annual "Beethoven Festival: Revolution 2012," organized and presented by the Chicago-based International Beethoven Project. The fest is based at the historic National Pastime Theater in Uptown Chicago, with free talks and master classes at five other area venues. You owe it to yourself to check out some or all of it.
What began last year as an event spanning 25 events in five days has grown to comprise 60 events in nine days and nights. The scope is as boundless as the imagination and energies of Lepauw, its artistic director. And while there's plenty of Beethoven to be heard, the offerings reach far beyond, to jazz, rock, dance and film, along with newly commissioned music and visual art works that reflect the master's revolutionary and Promethean ideals and inspire artists and listeners alike to this day.
The festival's goal, Lepauw further explains, is to define what revolution means in contemporary artistic, philosophical and political terms, and to find ways to reinvigorate the great traditions of music and art that have come down to us from Beethoven's era – "seeing the creative process up close," as he puts it.
That's a lofty objective for an Off Loop festival operating on a modest budget of about $300,000, with the majority of guest artists accepting a reduced fee, and a couple of local performers and groups donating their fees back to the festival. But "Revolution 2012" is something you can't catch anyplace else on the planet, an event of world-class importance, and I hope it succeeds in attracting the audiences it deserves. Thus far, it hasn't.
The festival's main venue, a former Masonic hall from the 1920s that is in the throes of renovation, looks a bit shabby and is accessible only by elevator or by walking up four flights of stairs. But the acoustics and performers are generally excellent, and that's what counts. Audience members are encouraged to view, and even purchase, newly commissioned, Beethoven-related works displayed along the auditorium walls. A BYOB policy tells you you're not in Orchestra Hall anymore.
Although the festival lost the eminent pianist and scholar Charles Rosen to cancellation, the roster is richly stocked with young talent from outside the city, including pianists HJ Lim, Soheil Nasseri and James Rhodes; violinist Rachel Kolly d'Alba; cellist Stephane Tetreault and clarinetist Julian Bliss. All of them are making their first appearances in Chicago.
I was sorry to have missed Canadian violinist James Ehnes playing the Beethoven concerto at Saturday's festival opener, at which former New York Philharmonic and Ravinia CEO Zarin Mehta was presented with the International Beethoven Project's Beethoven Spirit Award, but I was glad to have heard the recital of Beethoven violin and piano sonatas Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong performed the following afternoon. I've admired this greatly gifted violinist ever since his Chicago Symphony debut in 2006, and the orchestra should invite him back, posthaste. The duo's searching and mettlesome readings illuminated Beethoven's musical thought processes, setting the bar very high indeed for the remaining festival events.
Lepauw took pains to include as many Chicago musicians and ensembles as possible in "Revolution 2012." On Monday afternoon, I caught an interesting program by members of pianist-conductor Francesco Milioto's New Millennium Orchestra, playing rarely heard chamber works by Beethoven's teachers Franz Joseph Haydn and Johann Albrechtsberger, and his contemporaries Luigi Cherubini and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. A movement from Cherubini's String Quartet No. 3 revealed a distinctive musical intelligence at work. No wonder everyone from Beethoven on down to Riccardo Muti greatly admired the composer.
More of a mixed bag on Sunday evening was Italian pianist Gabriele Baldocci's recital of Beethoven's First and Third symphonies, in Franz Liszt's transcriptions for solo piano. The mighty "Eroica" Symphony figures prominently in the festival, including a performance of the orchestral original to close the festival on Sunday afternoon, and, earlier that day, the premieres of 18 new bagatelles for solo piano based on themes from that revolutionary masterpiece.
It was instructive to hear how Liszt transformed Beethoven's orchestra in pianistic terms, allowing one to hear into the part-writing and textures at close range. Baldocci is in the process of recording the entire set of Liszt's Beethoven symphony transcriptions. I hope those discs are better played than Sunday's rough, and not very ready, readings. Slow movements came off the best, but everything else emerged as a hash of wrong, rushed or missed notes, the fortes pounded out gracelessly.
Lepauw and friends are saving some of their biggest and/or most intriguing events for the second half of the festival.
On Thursday, the resident Prometheus Ensemble will present a late-night marathon of the complete Bach "Brandenburg" Concertos. Friday's late-night action will be a program of works by the iconoclastic Dutch contemporary composer Jacob TV, played by the Fulcrum Point New Music Project. A triple-header on Saturday night will include Polish composer Mikolaj Gorecki (son of Henryk Gorecki) hosting a program of his chamber works; the Ernest Dawkins Band and Jimmy Burns Band jamming with HJ Lim; and an interactive dance party, with electronica, going through the wee hours.
Sunday's grand finale concert will include the premiere of choreographer Ted Seymour's "The Creatures of Prometheus," set to Beethoven's music, conducted by German composer Matthias Pintscher and danced by the Joffrey Ballet's Abigail Simon and Ogulcan Borova. As if that and the "Eroica" weren't enough, the program also will feature Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, with Lepauw on piano, the Chicago Children's Choir and Festival Orchestra.
Thirty-four events await between now and Sunday. What are you waiting for?
"Beethoven Festival: Revolution 2012" continues through Sunday at the National Pastime Theater, Preston Bradley Center, 941 W. Lawrence Ave.(at Sheridan Road). One-day passes are $30. For information, visit internationalbeethovenproject.com.
Twitter @jvonrhein
