I think that Beethoven's Ninth may have the strongest and most detailed performance tradition of any classical work. Although in principle it would probably be possible to conduct a significantly different interpretation that would still be consistent with the markings Beethoven put in the score, I'm pretty sure that any conductor who tried to do so would, figuratively speaking, be stoned. The box of how much can be changed from the detailed and sometimes rather idiosyncratic traditional interpretation is pretty tight -- but I think that in these performances Hans Graf tried to push the edges of that box a bit by tending to what I would characterize as a somewhat more Austrian than German style. More specifically, he asked for more lyricism and line in some of the passages that are traditionally marchlike and heavily accented, and in general asked for a somewhat "softer" approach. At least, that was my impression. I liked the results, and to be honest one of the reasons was that this made it a little easier to sing, at least for the basses who have several high, exposed heavily accented lines. Of course, the sopranos have those soft, shimmering high notes, so he probably didn't make their lives any easier. Those passages are really difficult and our sopronos worked hard on them and did a very creditable job.
When I first became familiar with Beethoven's Ninth, which I think was in high school, the third movement was the one that interested me the least. Now it's my favorite part of the symphony. A good part of the reason is probably those beautiful horn solos which were drop-dead gorgeous as played by Julie Thayer. She's relatively new to the symphony and I think we're lucky to have her. As always, we're very conscious of every beep and boop that the horns play as they are pointed right back at us. And they do a lot of that in the Ninth, particularly in the scherzo. Of course, the Ninth doesn't have a gong -- the gong REALLY lights up our life in the works in which it's active, but I digress.
The first of the three concerts was at Sugarland Baptist, the first of what appears to be a continuing series of HSO concerts there. The acoustics of the hall are quite dry, and we were seated in a few rows spread out horizontally quite a ways behind the orchestra, the overall effect of which was that one didn't have the sense of immersion into the sound that one does at Jones Hall. At least being in the back row I certainly didn't. Those high bass passages felt awfully exposed in that environment.
I'd say that the chorus sang well, and the audience certainly gave us lusty ovations. The solo quartet was very good and had a truly excellent ensemble sound. Auralie Desmerais is doing a great job of finding soloists whose voices complement each other. The baritone had a rather unusual interpretation of the opening "Enough of that, let's do something different" passage -- possibly also testing the limits of the performance tradition box. As always, the Ninth is a crowd pleaser and all the audiences were very enthusiastic.