Lenox — In 2010, 115 years after the world’s largest classical music festival started, English pianist Paul Lewis became the first person to play all five Beethoven piano concertos in a single season of the BBC Proms. Performing them in a single weekend would be even more impressive, but that’s a trick most pianists should try at home and nowhere else. Paul Lewis will do it at Tanglewood on the weekend of July 29, 30, and 31 with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
When was the last last time anyone pulled this off at Tanglewood? Apparently never, according to Matthew Erikson of the BSO press office: “Alfred Brendel performed the same feat in 1992,” he reports, “but over several more days.”
Many pianists are capable of getting through Beethoven’s concertos without hitting any wrong notes. I asked Tanglewood fixture Emanuel Ax about how many players there might be. “I think there is actually quite a number,” he told me. “These are pieces that we’ve all played since we were very young. I think my friend Garrick Ohlsson just did it last week in Wyoming, at the Grand Teton Music Festival. And I’ve seen Alfred Brendel do it both at Tanglewood and New York. To have all of them close together, I think the immersion is wonderful.”
Of course, hitting all the right notes is something a machine can do. What we’re looking for in these performances are qualities few can deliver at Paul Lewis’ level. We’re looking for interpretive authenticity delivered with absolute precision. This requirement narrows the field considerably.
And Mr. Ax seems to agree: “The difficulty is playing any one of them—or all five of them—really well. And that, I think, Paul will certainly do [laughs]…The point, really, is that Paul is a fabulous pianist and a wonderful artist, and I’m sure the performances will be wonderful. I think people will enjoy it a lot, be excited by it, and I know Paul’s gonna play great.”
Even casual admirers of Beethoven’s music will not want to miss Paul Lewis’s concerto performances. For two reasons: First, Lewis has a reputation as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of the central European classical repertoire and is especially esteemed for the excellence of his Beethoven performances and recordings. The second reason is best explained by Professor Jeremy Yudkin, co-founder of Boston University’s Center for Beethoven Research:
“The five piano concertos of Beethoven,” says Yudkin, “span the most productive period of Beethoven’s life, from his earliest years in Vienna when he was still strongly influenced by Mozart and Haydn to his full maturity at the age of 39.” So these pieces, when played over a short time span, give us a view of the composer’s artistic progress over a period of decades. And you needn’t be an expert to hear it.
But Yudkin also adds, “To play all these varied works in one weekend is quite a feat.”
See Paul Lewis perform the complete cycle of Beethoven piano concertos at Tanglewood July 29, 30, and 31. Buy your tickets here.
