Not too gimmicky and not too talky (well, most of the time), CSI: Beethoven, the brainchild of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop, fused historical research, medical diagnoses, theatrical impersonation, slide projections and occasional music in an innovative fashion.
Given in two parts, Wednesday and last night at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the show reflected Alsop's own interest in the CSI franchise on TV, as well as a desire to provide an extra hook for the BSO's current Beethoven-filled season by investigating the composer's deafness and death. Judging by Part I, the project largely succeeded.
(Ironically, the only glitch Wednesday night came early on when a machine onstage, providing captions of the dialogue for the hearing-impaired, stopped working. The device was expected to be back in service last night.)
Beethoven is obviously a huge topic, no matter what angle you take. Here, the emphasis was on the lingering medical questions about the man. Although there's no Salieri figure to fuel the kind of conspiracy thinking that once surrounded Mozart's passing, there is much to explore and debate in Beethoven's medical history.
To assist in this investigation, Alsop enlisted Dr. Charles Limb, assistant professor of otolaryngology at the Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak, vice chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The doctors and Beethoven scholar William Meredith, director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University, donned white coats and shared a table and podium on one side of the stage.
On the other, Beethoven himself held forth, having taken leave from the spirit world to see what he could learn about his sorry fate back in 1827, when he died at age 56.
Baltimore actor Tony Tsendeas had a field day Wednesday portraying the ever-volatile composer -- a potentially tacky element in the show that turned out to be quite fun.
Tsendeas laid on the German accent a little too thickly sometimes, but he created a nicely fleshed-out presence and interacted colorfully with Alsop, who served as protagonist/host from the podium with her usual aplomb and wit. (My favorite bit came early on when she told the composer that the examination would begin after he took a seat and filled out some forms.)
The doctors addressed the evidence, including Beethoven's autopsy report, in straightforward fashion. Meredith added welcome humor in his informative remarks.
Except for a long, final monologue for Beethoven and some rather forced lines, Didi Balle's script achieved concision, naturalness and good flow. The whole thing looked and sounded like a docu-DVD in the making.
But Wednesday's 90-minute show felt padded, with the same ground covered more than once. There was also a lot of pushing to get folks to come back the next night for the answers to all the posited theories. I think a single, tightly compressed evening would have been more effective.
And I wish the music -- excerpts from the first five of Beethoven's nine symphonies and a snippet from a string quartet -- had been more neatly and meaningfully integrated into the package.
I also would have welcomed more interesting interpretive ideas from the conductor, who revealed less of her customary drive, and more involved, polished playing from the BSO.
Of course, this wasn't meant to be a concert, but a look beneath the epidermis of a musical giant. To that end, CSI: Beethoven cut smoothly and entertainingly.
tim.smith@baltsun.com