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Three of Beethoven’s seismic symphonies are featured on

the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Ravinia residency this

summer, and Alsop heads up the pack on July  with the

world-moving Ninth, featuring the Chicago Symphony Chorus

and soloists soprano Tamara Wilson, mezzo-soprano Michelle

DeYoung, tenor Paul Appleby, and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo

Green. Gustavo Dudamel makes his eagerly awaited debut

leading the Seventh on July  with an all-Beethoven program

that also features his longtime, equally starry collaborator Yuja

Wang performing the First Piano Concerto. Last, but not least,

of Ravinia’s triptych is the Fifth, fated to be feted in the hands

of Vasily Petrenko on August .

“If you read biographies,” observes Petrenko, “Beethoven

was doing a lot of things which were not conventional at the

time: by rumors, even running down the streets of Bonn na-

ked! But more important, he was always looking for something

new. It was also the time when, for the first time in world histo-

ry, classical music went from being mainly just the business of

the aristocracy and started to become almost for everyone, for

large crowds and large amounts of people.

“This is a man who in many ways we are obliged to for

the modern orchestra—what it is, how it looks, how many

instruments there are—because he was the one who was

constantly bringing new instruments into the orchestra. He

was the one who moved the genre of the symphony so much

forward, probably taking a lot of inspiration and novelty from

late Haydn quartets. He was a very unique composer, a very

unique human.”

than book learning for Alsop and Pet-

renko to develop their ultimate impressions of the composer.

Both can cite early experiences of Beethoven that held lasting

lessons.

“I grew up in a house filled with music,” Alsop recalls. “My

parents were both professional musicians, so Beethoven was

another member of the family. They played in a wonderful

string quartet, and I remember, when I was about 2 years old,

they were rehearsing a piece and I came downstairs and said,

‘Ah! I hate modern music!’ And my Dad said, ‘This is Beetho-

ven!’ I said, ‘Come on. Don’t pull my leg.’ And he said they

were rehearsing the

Grosse Fuge

. I thought it was new music

or Bartók or something. That was so shocking to me that it got

me starting to think about Beethoven in a new way. And of

course, my later experience of playing Beethoven’s late quartets

bore that out. So I think that it gave me a new framing to think

about Beethoven as the avant garde composer that he was.”

“I sang Beethoven as a boy in a choir, the Ninth, of course,”

Petrenko recalls. “Much later, when I had already started

conducting, Sir Georg Solti came to the Saint Petersburg Phil-

harmonic to conduct I think Brahms’s First Piano Concerto

and one of Beethoven’s symphonies—I can’t remember which

one; I think it was either the Fifth or the Seventh. The Saint

Petersburg Phil is an amazing orchestra, one of the greatest in

the world, but I would say that Beethoven and the First Vienna

School at that time wasn’t their strongest spot. They had a lot

of experience in Russian repertoire, and at that time—we’re

JULY 9 – JULY 22, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE

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