In the realm of classical music, there is no shortage of works that look deceptively simple.
One of the more curious is Beethoven's Triple Concerto in C major for piano, violin and cello. It's the only concerto that Beethoven wrote for three instruments. And though it's a slam-dunk work for orchestra and pianist, it offers white-knuckle moments for the cellist and violinist.
That mantle of difficulty will fall on the shoulders of Sacramento Philharmonic cellist Susan Lamb Cook and acting concertmaster Dan Flanagan on Jan. 12 when they perform the concerto with pianist Theresa Keene at the Community Center Theater. The Philharmonic's all-Beethoven concert will include Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" and the overture to "Prometheus."
Beethoven wrote the three-movement concerto between 1803 and 1804, on the eve of finishing his third symphony, "Eroica." The concerto remains a curiosity because we lack historical information about what moved Beethoven to write a concerto for so many instruments, and the fact that writing a concerto that highlights three instruments forces a composer to make unusual compositional choices.
"It's a hard piece, particularly for cello," said Michael Morgan, conductor and music director of the Philharmonic. "But it's also difficult for the violin, especially with regard to the range and technical ability needed to play it and to project over an orchestra."
Morgan said the work holds a unique place in the Beethoven repertoire.
"It's a conservative work," he said. "In fact, it's a rather light and informal discourse between the three soloists and the orchestra."
But the concerto's lightness and informal nature does not mean it's a musical trifle. If a lesser-known composer had written it, it would be considered a standout work.
Cellist Cook believes the concerto should be taken seriously.
"It takes a great deal of study to do it well," said Cook, who has been a cellist with the Philharmonic since 2003. "It takes a lot of precision from both the left and right hands to pull off the many scale passages, and the jumps and leaps that occur throughout this piece.
"Despite the technical difficulties, the phrases must have the freedom to breathe while still remaining metronomic."
To perform the concerto, Cook said, demands hundreds of hours of practice.
And for Cook, that means playing the tricky passages slowly, with a metronome. She then increases the tempo, one metronome notch at a time, while experimenting with her bowing technique.
"Sometimes it's merely a change in fingering or bowing that gives the correct lilt to a phrase," she said. "This type of study takes a lot of time, but it's worth it for staying true to the composer's intent."
For violinist Flanagan, who assumed the role of acting concertmaster this season when concertmaster Michael Anderson took a leave of absence, the concerto shows Beethoven moving away from a typical fiery Romanticism.
"This triple concerto is really written in more of a classical style, so it's much more simplistic than his other works," Flanagan said.
But in music, simple does not always equate with easy.
"There is a much larger margin for error," he said. Opportunity for a musical misstep arises by way of the many scales and arpeggios written into the work.
"That makes the concerto very difficult to play in tune," Flanagan said. "There are many opportunities for sounding bad."
As for the conductor, the challenge is a logistical one.
"For the conductor, complications arise when setting musicians up onstage," said Morgan, who has conducted the concerto several times.
Morgan said he has yet to solve the riddle of how to place three soloists onstage so that the conductor can see all three and the orchestra at the same time.
"There is no good solution," he said.
His most successful experience with the concerto was in the late 1980s, during his tenure as assistant conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In that performance, Morgan conducted pianist Jeffrey Kahane, violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Steven Isserlis.
"This was before any one of them was famous," Morgan said. "For that performance, we took the lid off the piano in order to put the conductor downstage so that I could conduct across the piano to the orchestra."
Typically, an open piano lid blocks either the cellist or violinist from a conductor's view onstage.
This is a huge hindrance in a piece that calls for a dialogue between soloists and conductor.
"In a way, the 'Triple' is a bit more operatic than other concertos because you have to have this conversation between three protagonists and the orchestra," Morgan said.
Perhaps that is why this concerto became such an atypical work in Beethoven's vast repertoire.
"Because of the need to show off the three soloists," Morgan said, "Beethoven had to write something that was a little less formal than any of his other concertos."
Call Bee arts critic Edward Ortiz, (916) 321-1071.
