July 21, 2009: 1810?

In the history of European music, 1810 is a relatively interesting year.  It is the year in which Ludwig van Beethoven composed the incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Egmont.  More significantly, it is the year of his F minor Opus 95 string quartet, which some regard as the last of his "middle" quartets.  From a more popular point of view, it is also the year of "Für Elise."  Finally, it is the year of the first entries in Otto Erich Deutsch's thematic catalog of the music of Franz Schubert.  It is a year that can easily be remembered for more than Napoleonic Wars.

It also happens to be the year in which both Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann were born.  While this was ultimately little more than historical accident, it was the justification for Tien Hsieh entitling her Noontime Concerts™ recital at Old St. Mary's Cathedral "Celebrating 1810."  Chopin was represented by his B major nocturne, Opus 62, Number 1, and his four Opus 33 mazurkas;  and for Schumann she played the six Opus 20 "Humoreske."  One would have thought that Chopin and Schumann would have made better partners than her coupling of Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms for the InterHarmony International Music Festival, but this turned out not to be the case.  Opus 20 was composed in 1839 when Schumann was at his most energetic to the point of being manic.  (It is also the year of the "Faschingsschwank aus Wien.")  Hsieh approached her performance with that sense of manic energy;  and, while it may have bordered on the reckless from time to time, it was definitely the right match for Schumann's spirit.  However, it was not the right match for her Chopin selections;  and there was a strong impression that she really did not know how to approach those five works.  The performances thus came out as rather detached interpretations by a performer who would have preferred to be somewhere else, perhaps playing more Schumann.  Schumann did reappear in her encore, Franz Liszt's transcription of his "Widmung" song, which had been on her InterHarmony Festival program.  From my point of view, this encore indicated that the accident of birth should have been ignored, allowing Schumann to be better partnered with Liszt.