The audience occupied the first 20 rows of the auditorium Tuesday night for the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra, including Ames High students. Some people were also scattered in the first balcony. A majority of the attendees were season ticket holders for Stephens.

Prior to the performance Dr. Jacob Harrison, director of orchestral activities at Iowa State, spoke in the Celebrity Café about the pieces and Beethoven. He shared that according to a poll in the early 2000s, Beethoven was the most-performed composer in the U.S.

In the auditorium, a grand piano waited centerstage between the audience and conductor. It was opened for the piano concerto and removed at intermission for the symphony. The orchestra sat behind, with a raised platform for the wind and percussion instruments in the rear. The performers wore black, with red lining in the men’s coattails, and were a large range in age.

The audience applauded at the entrance of the conductor. He lifted his arms to cue a simple and dramatic but quiet beginning to the “Overture for Egmont,” a piece inspired by Goethe’s play “Egmont.” The violas held the underlying tension while the cellos echoed the melancholy of the violins for the beginning of the overture.

Midway, the woodwinds introduced a melody of innocence, inspiring visions of spring and blooming flowers in an overall happy and sweet moment for the music.

The piece ended in a quick, triumphant manner. According to Harrison, Goethe had dictated the ending. In the play, the main character is climbing the stairs to his execution. Goethe described the event as “not a moment of sadness and lament, but victory,” Dr. Harrison said.

Beethoven enjoyed the play particularly because it shared a similar political situation to his contemporary Vienna, then under French control. Egmont’s country is under Spanish control, and his death is said to inspire a revolution in the play.

The second piece was Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 5.” With a hit of the drum and a chord from the orchestra, soloist Marcin Koziak was off on a cadenza, frequently frolicking up and down the keys during the piece. He slid up and danced back down, taking a chord from the orchestra three times.

The piece brought to mind wind and water, flowing but strong, like Pocahontas painting with the wind. Koziak’s fingers twirled across the keys as he bent over the piano, coaxing sweet, soft melodies that grew louder and angrier at various points in the piece, always fading back into their depression.

Beethoven usually performed the piano concertos himself, but his deafness prohibited his performance of the fifth concerto. It was the last piano concerto he wrote. The intertwining of joy and depression fighting each other possibly mirror the joy and depression of Beethoven’s inner ear.

Koziak would argue with the brass, marching low to high over and over. He would forcibly pull his hands from the keys with a half arm circle, letting the piano rest while the orchestra took over. The violins calmed the piano, fading back into the soft music of sweet days, feeling like a forgiving smile.

The end of the first movement of the concerto reintroduced the melodies, with a soft and questioning piano into a joyful orchestra, melancholic piano and orchestra, angry and frustrated piano simmering into soft pain accompanied by plucked strings and returning to the soft piano of a sunrise.

At one point Koziak seemed to run out of keys on the piano, hitting the top note and eliciting a chuckle from the audience member next to me. The piano would play alone occasionally, a quiet melody like a music box left empty and alone.

The second movement began as a love song between the strings. The piano fell like drops of sun, climbing steadily across wooden floorboards in the afternoon. Koziak stayed near the top of the keyboard, weaving notes like lace, with lulling footsteps from the orchestra behind him. The woodwinds would introduce and pass along a melody to the violins.

I envisioned ladies in skirts and big hats on a picnic in green grass. At one point the piano was a laughing child, toddling away from a parent.

The next part of the concerto had Koziak’s fingers spinning circles, with orchestrations suitable for the wedding celebration of a king or hero – or in this case, Emperor. Loud applause occupied the bows and exits of Koziak and conductor Ernst van Tiel. The applause lasted through Koziak’s return for another bow with the orchestra. 

At intermission, an Iowa State student and I discussed the difficulty of playing stringed instruments and the amount of movement required. “They’re just constantly going,” he said.

Following intermission, the conductor launched right into the Fifth Symphony with it’s familiar ‘da da da dun’ phrasing. He scooped sound from the violins with his left hand while keeping time with a baton in his right, moving vigorously enough to toss his hair. The orchestra softened as it climbed the scale, bows moving as one.

The second movement was soft, beginning in the lows. Van Tiel had put down his baton, instead stitching the melodies into a quilt in midair. Triumphant brass took the lead, leaving the violins to be light troublemakers and the cellos to keep the warmth. The woodwinds played at rippling water. The movement was lyrical, a ballad. The visual I got most often was of rabbits. The strings would pass melodies down from violin through to bass and back.

The third movement married the first two, a little more neurotic but not quite a frenzy. There were no sweeping, relaxed bowing of strings. Movements were sharp, with quick fingers. The cellos and basses taunted the other instruments while the first violin flicked strings.

An almost militaristic battle drum started faint and drew the whole orchestra into triumphant purpose. It built and built to a grand moment of sharp pulls, sweetly topped off by a trill in the piccolo. The orchestra sped up drastically as the trombones pulled the strings into a happy, warm chord.

There is no pause between the third and fourth movements. Those transitional bars are important to musical history, and Beethoven worked on them for many years, according to Dr. Harrison. The transition was so important, he even introduced the trombone, piccolo and contrabassoon to the orchestra just for it.

The audience stood following the symphony. The conductor spoke about their enjoyment of the U.S. and how unique such a long tour by one orchestra was. The orchestra was visiting 19 states.

The performance ended with a surprise that had audience members murmuring happily. The orchestra played a waltz many would find familiar. It evoked vision of grandeur, velvet and gold dance halls. One audience member described it as a “dark waltz.”

Painfully loud applause followed. Audience members commented on how fun the conductor was to watch, the skill of the pianist and his youth.