BEETHOVEN: Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56; Incidental Music to Goethe’s Egmont, Op. 84 – Trio Wanderer/ Anja Harteros, sop./ Konrad Beikircher, narr./ Guerzenicher-Orch. Koelner Philharmoniker/ James Conlon – Harmonia mundi

BEETHOVEN: Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56; Incidental Music to Goethe’s Egmont, Op. 84 – Trio Wanderer/ Anja Harteros, sop./ Konrad Beikircher, narr./ Guerzenicher-Orchestrer Koelner Philharmoniker/ James Conlon – Harmonia mundi HMG 502131, 73:36 **** :
Several connoisseurs recently have raved to me about Trio Wanderer, now celebrating its twenty-fifth year in 2012. Violinist Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabedien plays on a 1748 instrument by Petrus Guarnerius, while cellist Raphael Pidoux performs on a 1680 instrument by Goffredo Cappa. Pianist Vincent Coq, a graduate like his fellow from the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris, plays with silken finesse. Their collaboration in the Beethoven 1807 Triple Concerto (17 December 2000) glides in all parts, if one can call the knotty metrics of the wonderful Beethoven polonaise finale “gliding.” Having auditioned the work over the years with the Oistrakh Trio, the Beaux Arts Trio, and the Stern-Rose-Istomin Trio, along with celebrity collaborations from the likes of Oistrakh/Richter/Rostropovich, I can well appreciate the virtuosic ease and grace with which this eminently concertante work in antique style by Beethoven allows the soli, and particularly the cello, to execute their respective figures with ample assistance from James Conlon’s orchestra.
Having participated myself in the narration of the Beethoven incidental music for Goethe’s Egmont (1811-1812) for a 2011 performance at Stanford University, Conlon’s intelligent and passionate rendering of the Overture and nine subsequent numbers of the melodrama appeals to me, though his version limits the spoken part only to that preceding the Victory-Symphony conclusion. I also recall the wonderful opportunities this score allots the principal oboe. The original narrative delineates a rather sentimental story-line rife with political ramifications for the Netherlanders’ resistance to Spanish tyranny in the form of Count Egmont and his love Klaerchen, both of whom die for the cause of freedom. Klaerchen’s first aria, “Die Trommel geruehret” announces her militant, “masculine” will, the emotional fervor close to that in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio.  Soprano Herteros projects excellent diction and  clarion head-tone.
Conlon injects each of the four entr’actes with the dramatic relevance required to illuminate the context and prepare the next scene. Number two proves particularly rich in its tympanic motto that warms of the Duke of Alba’s treachery. Klaerchen’s second aria, “Freudvoll und leidvoll,” presents a second strophic song, this embracing the opposites of joy and despair, longing and fear, anticipating the poison Klaerchen consumes in order to die with Egmont. Even her death-scene, instrumentally realized, quotes the love song, so Beethoven, too, has his Tristan motif. Beikricher’s narration recounts Egmont’s last dream, a vision of redemption, that death brings the “delusion” of a meaningful life, made manifest in the thunderous vivacity of the Overture’s last page repeated as an ode to the will to liberty.
—Gary Lemco