Symphony serves up Beethoven, Schubert classics

The two composers were born 27 years apart. One was a provincial outsider who came to dominate Vienna’s musical life. The other was a native Viennese, mostly ignored for his entire short life.

They died within a year of each other – the mighty Ludwig and the inconsequential Franz.

Nowadays Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert are considered the two great contemporaries of late Viennese classicism.

The Spokane Symphony will feature music by Beethoven and Schubert in a pair of concerts Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox.

Eckart Preu will conduct Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 and Luciano Berio’s “Rendering,” based on sketches Schubert left for a never-completed 10th symphony. Norman Krieger will be soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3.

“Schubert adored Beethoven,” a traveling Preu said in a telephone interview from the Denver airport. “You can hear how Schubert was challenged by Beethoven’s model and how he tried to meet that challenge.

“I am fascinated by the way Schubert carries on the way Beethoven arranged layers of rhythms and used weird accents. For me, that goes straight on into Brahms. But Schubert easily did something that was hard for Beethoven: Schubert could write wonderful melodies so easily, and Beethoven found that very hard.”

Still, Preu says, “Schubert almost never sounds the same as Beethoven, even when he is using basically the same instruments. Schubert’s drama is quite different than Beethoven’s drama.

“I can think of only one place in Schubert’s Ninth were you might think, ‘Oh that sounds like Beethoven.’ That’s in the second movement; then he has a grand pause and he goes back to sounding like Schubert.”

Preu has paired the late Schubert symphony with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, completed in 1803 when Beethoven was still in his early thirties.

“Even though it is a concerto,” Preu says, “it has the symphonic sound and impact we think of as typical of Beethoven.”

Piano soloist Krieger previously appeared with the symphony in 2006, playing Gershwin’s Concerto in F.

“I loved his playing and wondered how he might do Beethoven,” Preu says. “No big theater, just such beautiful musicianship – almost the way I imagine Bartok or Rachmaninoff might have played Beethoven.”

Krieger grew up in Los Angeles, where he studied first with an uncle, then with Esther Lipton and, during summers, with Rosina Lhevinne.

At 15, he became a full scholarship student at Juilliard with Adele Marcus, and after graduation went to London where he studied with the famous Beethovenist, Alfred Brendel.

Krieger’s repertoire covers the standard classical literature as well as demanding contemporary works. He recently recorded both of Brahms’ piano concertos on DVD on the Beaufour label.

In 1997, Krieger returned to his hometown, becoming a faculty member of the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.

Preu opens this weekend’s concerts with Luciano Berio’s “Rendering.” Berio uses the title in the sense of an architectural rendering of sketches for a building, basing his work on Schubert’s sketches for a 10th symphony and using the same instrumentation as Schubert used for the Ninth.

“I find it fascinating how Berio takes the material left by Schubert,” Preu says. “We go along for a while with music sounding like Schubert. And we think, ‘Oh this is safe, not like Berio at all.’

“Then all of a sudden, where Schubert’s sketch breaks off, the Berio comes in to fill in the blank spots. It is really quite beautiful and such fun to hear Schubert and Berio together.”

Preu and Krieger will discuss the music on the program Saturday and Sunday beginning one hour before curtain time as part of the Gladys Brooks Pre-Concert Lecture series.