Beerthoven and Brats: Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra took Beethoven to the pool hall

Fargo-Moorhead's BeethovenFest ended last week — with neither a whimper nor a bang, but perhaps instead with a rousing subito forte.

The festival's final event was "Beerthoven and Brats" at Fargo Billiards and Gastropub, for which the rhythms of pool balls being racked and struck competed with a different kind of music: the by turns sweet, smooth, sensual, and strident sounds of Beethoven's chamber music, as performed by members of the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra.

The event brought BeethovenFest full circle, since the month-long celebration kicked off at the start of February with a pair of all-Beethoven concerts also played by the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony. "Beerthoven and Brats" was presumably a smaller, funkier affair. As Linda Boyd — executive director of the orchestra and the event's MC — put it, the members of the orchestra had been charged with "coming up with little nuggets that maybe they hadn't played before."

This led to some interesting and obscure works being covered — including a host of compositions without opus numbers, and sometimes instruments with which Beethoven is not normally associated.

One such work was Three Equali for Trombones, a three-movement trombone quartet that had, unusually, been composed specifically for trombone quartet by Beethoven, not rearranged for it. One of the quartet's members told the audience a bit about the piece, explaining that the "equali" of the title was a style of composition popular at the time, which roughly means "equal."

"Each of us plays about the same number of notes at about the same volume," he said. He went on to add that equali pieces were "often played at funerals."

Another somewhat exotic instrumental palette was provided by a set of variations on La ci darem la mano, a duet from Mozart's Don Giovanni, which was scored for two oboes and an English horn. While introducing the piece, Boyd mentioned that the English horn had in Beethoven's day sometimes been known as the "oboe d'amore," or the "oboe of love," and was therefore well suited to the duet's dramatic content.

The final selection performed was the third movement of the Septet in Eb Major, Op. 20, which is notable for being the last piece Beethoven composed with totally unimpaired hearing. Sadly he felt that the piece was lightweight in comparison to the work he did later, and he resented that it became one of his most popular compositions.

The space designated for the performances was a sort of raised platform above the fields of billiard tables, with chairs set up for the audience. Servers wove through the chairs to take whispered food and drink orders while the musicians played. The event's eponymous brats were large and came on buttered, toasted buns, piled with sauerkraut, and with chips on the side. People ate in their seats from plates perched on their laps while they watched the musicians play. Sports games flickered silently on the screens of televisions suspended from the ceiling throughout the building.

The location's oddness as a venue for chamber music was not lost on the orchestra members, but also not without its own idiosyncratic benefits. Before introducing the final septet, Boyd shared an anecdote about the orchestra members teasing their string bassist for being late to a recent performance. She said that one viola player had come up with a contingency plan should the bassist have been missing again for this performance. "We'll be in a pool hall," he said. "I'm sure we'll be able to find a bassist somewhere."

"Beerthoven and Brats" also provided the opportunity to "meet" Beethoven, in the form of Jay Nelson, an actor who played the composer in a recent local production of the play 33 Variations, about Beethoven's famous Diabelli Variations. The first performance of the afternoon had been pulled from that play, with pianist John Roberts tackling the 32nd variation, the Fugue in Eb Major.

After the final septet ended, as people began to file out, I ran into Beethoven and shook his hand.

"This is my last event in Fargo, then I'm needed back in Vienna," he said. "Duty calls."

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