Page 64 - Coverage Book_Aurora Orchestra Autumn 2020

Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament, No. 52 is a beautiful but emotionally

draining work in three movements (‘Saying goodbye’, ‘Dreaming’ and
‘Hearing loss’).
Gentle, tonal string passages (perhaps referencing the ‘Heiliger
Dankgesang’ of the Op. 132 string quartet) open the first movement, but a

discordant, tinny underlay suggestive of tinnitus gradually becomes
apparent. The jolly piano introduction of ‘Dreaming’ with its almost-jazz
riffs becomes a series of rhythmic staccato notes and chords from both
piano and orchestra; the piano tone changes to a ‘plinkier’ sound, and

synthesised heavy breathing, retching and screaming sounds are added to
the mix, which, by now has become a chaotic orchestral canter. The
thunder continues in the third movement, along with a Beethovian march,
a carnival waltz, a brief ‘Dies Irae’ quote, a deal of Wagnerian brass and

some busy woodwind. All of this is interspersed with passages of music
from an increasingly scratched and fuzzy recording on an old horn
gramophone on whose final crackles the piece closes.
Aurora and Collon gave the piece a brilliant – albeit harrowing – first

outing that was full of disturbing orchestral colour, smartly rendered
dynamics and rhythmic variety.

An exploration of rhythm is also the great driver of
Beethoven’s 7 symphony, and the second half of the Prom was an account
th
of this seminal work performed entirely from memory. All performers

instinctively know that ‘getting out of the score’ improves communication,
and here was a masterly demonstration of this. Most of the performers
stood, and from their movements as they performed, it was clear that every
player absolutely inhabited the music, pushed into physical gesture by its

unflagging brilliance.
“All performers instinctively know that ‘getting out of the score’
improves communication, and here was a masterly
demonstration of this”

Nowhere was this more evident than in the third movement scherzo, which,
despite its more than sprightly pace and Collon’s taking wall-of-death
cornering with the dynamic changes, was absolutely together on every
phrase. Neither were Beethoven’s shifts in timbre ignored, and the different

textures – from woodwind flutters through gusts of brass to sudden volleys
from hard-stick timpani – rattled around the orchestra.