The key, F minor, is that of the Appassionata Piano Sonata, the storm scene in the Sixth Symphony and the Egmont Overture, Lewis Lockwood points out in his biography Beethoven.
At Curtis one day earlier this month, the work was on view at different angles. In the morning in Jeanne Minahan McGinn's language and literature class, Benjamin Beilman, a violinist, delivered an oral report on the quartet. "Obviously this is very typical of Beethoven," he said. "He switches character very, very rapidly." Beilman heard Beethoven's frustration at growing deaf in the quartet's angry moments. He suggested that the mood swings of the piece supported a theory that Beethoven was bipolar.
In the afternoon Gilbert led a coaching session on the quartet for the principals of the orchestra string sections: Sylvia Kim, the concertmistress; Quan Yuan, the principal second violinist; Philip Kramp, the principal violist; and Abraham Feder, the principal cellist.
Gilbert drilled them on the gesture needed to start the piece, on the lengths of notes ending phrases, on rhythmic inflections of the opening bars. The opening is "explosive, defiant, like 'me against the world,'" he said.
"It sounds a little uptight the way you're playing it," he added.
The second movement opens with a lone descending cello scale. Gilbert told Feder to "feel that delicious twinge of pain."
Several hours later Gilbert was in front of the string orchestra, rehearsing the large-scale version, which Mahler transcribed with few changes. The contrast was fascinating: from the terse, internal dialogue of the quartet to the lush and powerful communal expression of the orchestra version. Gilbert struggled to have the orchestra react quickly to his gestures, to infuse their lines with character.
In an interview later he compared the quartet version to a sports car and the orchestra version to a truck. "But I would like the orchestra to function like a sports car," he said. In both versions of the piece, he said he wanted the players to have a "highly developed point of view about the music."
Diaz said the "jury is still out" on the ultimate success of the project but suggested that the idea might be repeated with other works.
Not all the students were thrilled with the Opus 95 Project. Several said they did not have much to do with it: wind players, not surprisingly.
"The idea of a schoolwide, one-piece project is really cool," said Matthew McDonald, a bassoonist. "I just think we could have been more involved directly."
The project also took a little gentle ribbing. At the Curtis holiday party, where the students traditionally put on humorous skits, McDonald and a fellow student wrote a number about a contrabassoonist struggling through an audition.
The music? Opus 95.
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