Judged in terms of name recognition, Ludwig Van Beethoven is almost certainly the best-known composer of classical music in America. Yes, Beethoven has yet to be the subject of an Academy Award-winning movie comparable to Tom Hulse’s portrayal of Mozart in “Amadeus,” but rock fans worldwide know him as the man Chuck Berry told to “roll over” (“and tell Tchaikovsky the news!”), and collectors of World War II trivia know how four notes from his Fifth Symphony — “dot-dot-dot-DASH! — became a theme for Allied victory.
Dane Lam, music and artistic director of the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, describes Beethoven as a man who brought new ideas to the classical music of his time.
“Beethoven, in his time, was iconoclastic,” Lam said recently. “He was rebelling against certain power structures. He was seeking to expand the harmonic and the rhythmic and the formal language of music. The challenge is to take those qualities, those revolutionary qualities, of the music, and make it sound just as fresh and just as revolutionary today.”
And for the first time in the history of the HSO and its predecessors in Hawaii, all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies are being presented in a single festival.
“To my knowledge it has never been done in the state of Hawaii,” Lam said. “We’re doing all nine Beethoven symphonies in about six weeks. I’m very excited about that because these are really symphonies that, I think, changed the world, and that’s without hyperbole.”
“Beethoven comes with a lot of ‘baggage’ because certain passages from his symphonies are the most iconic passages not just in classical music, but really in music around the world. When you hear that rhythm (from his Fifth Symphony), I’m sure that there are very few people in the entire world who would not recognize that, and so there’s a lot of expectation that comes with (playing Beethoven). It’s a challenge that I really relish.”
Honolulu Chamber Music Series is one of several groups that Lam has enlisted as partners in the Beethoven Festival with an eye on giving Honolulu audiences opportunities to experience Beethoven’s music in other locations and formats.
“When I came up with the idea of doing this, it wasn’t just about us hearing the Beethoven symphonies, but about the whole city celebrating this composer who, although he was born in Europe hundreds of years ago, is a composer that really belongs to the shared cultural heritage of all of humanity.”
Presenting the nine symphonies in a unified program also lets audiences experience Beethoven’s evolution as a composer.
“They can hear him move from a promising young composer with a great vision and still pushing the envelope, to really moving into a world in which — by the time he wrote the Ninth Symphony — he was introducing voices and choir and soloists and some texts into a symphony for the first time,” Lam said. “We can see Beethoven taking a really tiny germ of an idea and parlaying that into vast symphonic works that go on a real emotional journey. That’s a journey that I’m really excited to take, and a journey on which I’m really excited to take audiences.”
Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra – Beethoven Festival
www.myhso.org
>> Honolulu Chamber Music Series Presents: Aoi Trio
Beethoven: Piano Trio in D Major, Op 70, No. 1
7:30 p.m., Feb. 1, Orvis Auditorium
>> “Masterworks: Beethoven Festival: ‘Eroica’”
Works by Ye Xiaogang and Beethoven (Symphonies 1 and 3)
Dane Lam, conductor
7:30 p.m., Feb. 6, Hawaii Theatre
>> “Masterworks: Beethoven Festival: ‘Immortal Beloved’”
Works by Jessica Hunt and Beethoven (Symphonies 2 and 7)
Dane Lam, conductor
4 p.m., Feb. 9, Hawaii Theatre
>> “Masterworks: Beethoven Festival: ‘Pastorale’”
Works by Michael-Thomas Foumai and Beethoven (Symphonies 4 and 6)
Dane Lam, conductor
4 p.m., Feb 16, Hawaii Theatre
>> “Masterworks: Beethoven Festival: ‘Fate’”
Works by Raymond Yiu and Beethoven (Symphonies 8 and 5)
Dane Lam, conductor
7:30 p.m., March 6, Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> “Chamber Music Hawai‘i Presents: Beethoven Fest
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 (“Razumovsky”)
Beethoven: Septet in E-flat Major, Op.2
7 p.m., March 8, Doris Duke Theatre
>> “Masterworks: Beethoven Festival: ‘Ode to Joy’”
Works by Dai-Keong Lee and Beethoven (Symphony No. 9, Choral)
Dane Lam, conductor
O‘ahu Choral Society
4 p.m., March 9, Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> HSOxHYS Side By Side
Elysium: Fanfares on Themes from the Beethoven Symphonies
Shostakovich – Excerpts from Symphony No. 5 in D minor Op. 47
Michael-Thomas Foumai and Joseph Stepec, conductors
Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, Hawai‘i Youth Orchestra, Concert String Orchestra, Music in the Clubhouse, Music4Kids and Honolulu ‘Ukulele Class
7:30 p.m., March 12, Blaisdell Concert Hall