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Sunday Afternoon Classics
Beethoven Finale
Friday 30 September 7.30pm
Musical Revolutionary: Beethoven
In 1794, the troops of Revolutionary France occupied Beethoven’s birthplace of Bonn. The young composer had
already left. But in 1805, and again in 1809, Beethoven would hear the gunfire of battle, and witness his adopted
home city of Vienna overrun by armed soldiers speaking a new language: a language of freedom, of change – in a
word, a language of revolution. Beethoven lived through the era that saw the explosive birth of modern Europe,
and no artist – no man, perhaps, apart from Napoleon himself – embodied that era more powerfully.
The facts of his career are straightforward: brought up in a musical family in the German city of Bonn, his talents
were spotted early, and in 1792, at the age of 21, he was sent to Vienna, Europe’s most musical capital, to study
composition. He was too late to study with Mozart, and he was too impatient to learn much from his lessons with
Haydn. Instead, he paid his way as a pianist, making young society ladies swoon with his impassioned playing and
bad-boy looks. In the new age of romantic literature, it was like meeting a hero from Goethe or Kleist – and getting
them round to play for you.
Before Beethoven turned 30, though, came the agonising realisation that he was losing his hearing. He reluctantly
gave up performing, and tore up his Third Symphony’s dedication to Napoleon when he realised that the
Revolution had been betrayed. Retreating into an ever more powerful imaginative world, he continued to
compose: an opera about love and freedom, Fidelio. Nine symphonies that turned the elegant forms of Haydn and
Mozart into huge, supercharged expressions of the human spirit. String quartets that pushed the language of music
into a visionary new world. And piano music that seemed to lay bare the human heart itself, composed by a man
who could hear only silence.
Beethoven never married, his behaviour was eccentric, and his temper was legendary. None of that mattered: even
before his death, he was universally acknowledged as a creative titan – in his own way, a hero. Beethoven is the
model for every musician ever since – Wagner, Mahler, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Amy Winehouse – who has
sacrificed their life to their art, and refused to be taken on any terms but their own. “There are and will be
thousands of princes”, he said to his patron, Prince Lobkowitz. “There is only one Beethoven”.
Richard Bratby © 2016
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Violin Concerto in D, Op.61
Allegro ma non troppo / Fast, but not too fast
Larghetto / Fairly slow
Rondo: allegro / Rondo: fast
Battle-Royale
The concerto’s a young man’s game. A grand contest between a single, heroic soloist and the massed forces
of the full orchestra, takes a certain kind of outlook. And that’s exactly what we’d expect from Ludwig van
Beethoven, musical revolutionary and the original angry young composer. It’s true – he wrote all seven of
his concertos before his 40th birthday. But if we expect that Beethoven’s concertos will automatically be
earth-shaking musical battles-royales, we’re in for a big surprise when we hear his Violin Concerto.
Puns and party-tricks
Contemporaries were certainly baffled: “commonplace”, “tiring”, a “concerto for timpani” were just some of
their reactions. It wasn’t what they expected from any sort of concerto, let alone from Beethoven. He’d
written it late in 1806, having heard that the Viennese violinist Franz Clement was planning a benefit
concert on 23 December. Beethoven raced to complete it, and handed over the score, headed with a
typically lame pun (“Concerto par Clemenza pour Clement” – “Concerto in mercy [clemency] for Clement”)
so late that Clement had to sight-read it on the night. Clement went one step further, scattering the
concerto’s movements throughout the concert, and inserting between them a masterpiece of his own – a
trick solo performed on one string of an upside-down violin. Knowing what to expect, it’s a miracle
Beethoven kept his temper, let alone completed the Concerto.
Another world
But in 1806 Beethoven – working hard at his 5th and 6th symphonies, and revising his opera Fidelio – was
thinking on another level. The violin is the supreme singer amongst instruments, the sweetest and brightest
instrument that doesn’t need to take a breath. So Beethoven gave it space to sing as never before, and wrote
a solo part in which every note is essential. There’s no showing-off for its own sake – in fact, except for just
two notes near the very end, he doesn’t even use any pizzicato (plucking).
A new kind of concerto needed a new approach to the orchestra. In Beethoven’s earlier concertos, the
strings dominate. Now he realised that this wouldn’t provide enough contrast for his uniquely lyrical solo
part. So the themes of the first movement glide in on the winds, the horns open up huge vistas in the
Larghetto, and the bassoon echoes the high-flying violin – like the shadow thrown as a bird soars over a
sunlit landscape. And the concerto opens with five quiet taps of the drum. No-one had ever done that
before.
Method and meaning
Don’t expect things to rush, but equally, don’t expect a completely easy ride – that first melody for winds
may sound like the sweetest of hymn tunes, but when the orchestral violins make their first appearance,
quietly repeating the opening five notes, they get it deliberately wrong. Listen out for those five taps again.
Beethoven’s planting the seeds of dramatic tension.
If the Larghetto feels particularly personal, that’s no coincidence. Halfway through, the violin enters with a
new melody so touching that it’s hard not to wonder if it has a special meaning. And yes, it’s uncannily
similar to a moment in Fidelio – the melody with which the political prisoner Florestan blesses his gaoler
for offering him refreshment. Without ever being explicit, Beethoven makes himself perfectly clear. And
while the final Rondo doesn’t match the first movement in scale, nor does it resort to fireworks. Spirited
without being flashy, joyful without being frivolous, it closes the concerto with a happiness that’s been truly
earned.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
Incidental Music, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op.61
Overture
Scherzo
Fairy March
You Spotted Snakes
Intermezzo
Nocturne
Wedding March
Dance of the Clowns
Finale
As every Star Trek fan knows, Shakespeare is best appreciated in the original Klingon. Fewer of us – in the
English-speaking world, anyway – realise that since the late 18th century, Germans have also loved the
Bard with a passion that puts us Brits to shame. To this day, there are more productions of Shakespeare
annually in Germany than in the UK, and Germany’s greatest poets, Schiller and Goethe, spoke proudly of
unser Shakespeare: “Our Shakespeare”.
So it’s no surprise that a German family as cultured as Mendelssohn’s – which counted Goethe amongst its
friends – should know its Shakespeare. “From our youth," recalled Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny, “we were
entwined in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Felix particularly made it his own. He identified with all of
the characters. He recreated them, so to speak, every one of them whom Shakespeare produced in the
immensity of his genius.” Genius loves company: so it was that in 1826 A Midsummer Night’s Dream
inspired Felix Mendelssohn – at the age of 17 – to create the first ‘concert overture’ in the history of music.
Mendelssohn’s overture to Ein Sommernachtstraum (naturally, the Germans have a single word for it) is
worthy of Shakespeare himself, and hardly a composer of his generation was left unchanged by its poetry,
its verve, and its ravishing orchestral colours. But it was a work of pure imagination – it was never intended
as part an actual stage production of the play. What’s truly remarkable is how, 17 years later in the spring of
1842, when the King of Prussia commissioned him to write incidental music for an actual production in
Berlin, Mendelssohn slipped straight back into the same enchanted mood. Shakespeare worked his magic
again, and Mendelssohn composed a set of short orchestral pieces that capture the moonlit poetry of
Shakespeare’s great fantasy better than any composer before or since.
Overture
Four luminous chords float on the evening air, each gently tinted a different shade: Four days will quickly
steep themselves in night / Four nights will quickly dream away the time. A shimmer of violins fills the
night, as fairies dart, rustling and sparkling, through the moonlit woods, and there’s a blazing flourish of
sound, as the full orchestra paints the regal splendour of Duke Theseus’s court. And is that the braying of a
donkey? It’s all there, in the music of a 17-year-old boy, and it’s still magical.
Scherzo
Mendelssohn intended this to be played while the scene changed between Act 1 and act 2 – from the all-toohuman court of Athens to the fairy kingdom of Oberon and Titania. Dancing, flickering flutes create an
atmosphere of shimmering magic; spare a thought for the first flute in the tongue-twisting final bars!
Fairy March
Ill met by moonlight, Proud Titania… Deep in the forest, Oberon and Titania, rulers of the fairies, enter
from opposite sides of the stage, escorted by their magical attendants.
You Spotted Snakes
Titania’s fairy court sing their queen to sleep – unaware of the trick that her jealous husband is about to
play upon her. Whirring violins and violas help weave the lullaby:
Intermezzo
An interlude after the end of Act Two. Waking alone in the forest, Hermia searches frantically for her
beloved Lysander. Mendelssohn paints the scene – urgent, restless and melancholy – until Bottom and his
rustic friends shamble on, and things suddenly get a lot more cheerful.
Nocturne
An interlude between Acts 3 and 4, deep in the forest. The horn sings a quiet hymn, violins whisper and
flutes rock gently in the distance; only a brief flicker of anxiety disturbs the peace of the sleeping lovers in
this ravishingly poetic ‘night piece’.
Wedding March
Yes – this is the wedding march. (The tune we know as ‘Here Comes the Bride’ was actually written by
Richard Wagner for his opera Lohengrin, just 8 years later). It’s the happy and ceremonial conclusion to
Act 4, as spells are dissolved and lovers united. Crowned with ringing trumpets and crashing cymbals as the
whole orchestra trills with joy, let’s just admit it – it’s simply the best wedding march ever written.
Dance of the Clowns
Act 5: the spells have been undone, the lovers united and Bottom and his amateur thespians have blundered
their way through Pyramus and Thisbe. Now they offer their noble hosts a country dance, or bergomask –
which sounds exactly as you’d expect from someone who’s just spent most of the night with the head of a
donkey.
Finale
The mortals have retired to bed, and Oberon and Titania (now reconciled) and their fairies swarm into the
palace to sing a final blessing. A great serenity settles over the music as the fairies repeat Oberon’s final
command. But it’s Puck who has the final word: as the four opening chords seal the dream with a spell.
Programme notes by Richard Bratby © 2016