SYMPHONY REVIEW Ax, Beethoven work highlight concert

The concert also featured Symphony No. 9.
By JEROME K. STEPHENS
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Emanuel Ax, one of the truly great artists of today, was the highlight of Sunday's Pittsburgh Symphony concert, performing Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3.
The orchestra, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, performed at the Scottish Rite Cathedral here.
It was first performed April 4, 1803, with Beethoven as the soloist. How did Beethoven play it? No one really knows, but there are those who like to think they do. What was important was that Ax played it as it really should be, excellently and enthusiastically. No one could ask for more.
The concerto is one that stands at a point when Beethoven was beginning to leave his early compositional style behind. It is still in the traditional Classical Period form, and seems to have been intended to show Beethoven the Concert Artist to best advantage. It seems the composer intended the orchestral part to be a backdrop to his virtuosity.
Symphony No. 9
The other major work presented was the Symphony No. 9 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich had the misfortune of Stalin expecting a majestic composition that would celebrate the end of World War II and would glorify the Soviet leaders. Stalin was doomed to disappointment, as he was with Prokofkiev's 6th Symphony. If there is any triumph in the symphony, it is the triumph of the private soldiers that they had managed to get home alive, while their leaders butted in and noisily claimed all the glory.
The symphony is in five movements. One of the outstanding sections was in the fourth movement when bassoonist Nancy Goeres played a moving and gentle solo, which was punctuated by raucous brass passages. She then segued into the lively fifth movement. Any triumph there was the triumph of the ordinary citizens.
Opening
The concert opened with "The Lark Ascending" by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The format of the composition is of a solo violin with an orchestral background. The exquisite solo passages were played by Andr & eacute;s C & aacute;rdenes, the internationally known violin virtuoso who is also the concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony.
The Dresden version of the overture to the opera "Tannh & auml;user" by Richard Wagner concluded the concert. It is by its nature a translucent work with its own grandeur, but it is very much a standard operatic overture. It begins and concludes with the chorus of the returning pilgrims from the third act, with an interlude of a wild bacchanale dance punctuated by Heinrich Tannh & auml;user's paean to Venus.
There is another version of the overture that is seldom played that is more interesting. This was composed for the Paris premiere of the opera. The Parisians wanted a ballet, and Wagner gave them one. But he didn't place it in the traditional position in the third act, but at the beginning. In this, instead of the concluding Pilgrim's Chorus, the music of a much more mature Wagner is thrust in as an accompaniment to a truly wild bacchanale. It is my hope that conductors will schedule the Paris version more often.