Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor VLADIMIR JUROWSKI Principal Conductor Designate EDWARD GARDNER supported by Mrs Christina Lang Assael Leader PIETER SCHOEMAN supported by Neil Westreich Patron HRH THE DUKE OF KENT KG Chief Executive and Artistic Director TIMOTHY WALKER CBE AM Chief Executive Designate DAVID BURKE
Programme notes & texts Saturday 4 April 2020 | 7.30pm
Beethoven King Stephen Overture, Op. 117 (8’) Beethoven Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 (17’) Beethoven Ah! Perfido, Op. 65 (15’) Beethoven Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II (31’)
The timings shown are not precise and are given only as a guide.
Programme notes
The undiscovered Beethoven ‘Your genius is centuries ahead of our time, and there is scarcely one listener alive who is sufficiently enlightened to appreciate the full beauty of your music.’ The words of Beethoven’s Russian admirer and patron Prince Nikolai Galitzin still have a startling relevance. 250 years after Beethoven’s birth, a work like the Grosse Fuge has lost little of its capacity to shock, challenge and astound. Yet Beethoven was also a man of his time, and tonight we also hear a pair of works – the King Stephen Overture and the aria Ah! Perfido – in which he adopts contemporary fashions, with the wonderfully uncomplicated ambition of simply bringing the house down. And to finish, the 19-year-old Beethoven responds to the politics of his age with a cantata that his contemporaries found too difficult to perform, yet which speaks today with unmistakable directness in the passionate, imaginative, powerfully original voice that we recognise as Ludwig van Beethoven.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) King Stephen Overture, Op. 117 King Stephen – or, to Hungarians Szent István – is the founder and patron saint of Hungary, whose domed crown topped with a lopsided cross is still revered as a symbol of Hungarian statehood. When Emperor Franz I granted the city of Pest a new Royal national theatre, the German playwright August von Kotzebue wrote a patriotic prologue for the opening festivities: King Stephen, or Hungary’s First Benefactor. Beethoven was approached to write the incidental music, which was performed at the theatre’s opening ceremony on 9 February 1812.
Beethoven was so taken with Kotzebue’s text that he invited the playwright to collaborate with him on an opera – ‘romantic, serious, heroic comic, or sentimental, as you please’. Nothing came of that, but when it came to King Stephen the composer’s task was clear – to provide something celebratory with a distinctly Hungarian flavour. The overture begins with a ceremonial call to attention, interrupted by a jaunty march for woodwinds and a brilliant Presto, whose flying, syncopated rhythms evoke the peppery panache of Hungarian military music. Everything we know suggests that it went down a storm, with one contemporary critic reporting that it was ‘very original, excellent, and worthy of its master’.
Ludwig van Beethoven (arr. for string orchestra by Felix Weingartner) Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 Beethoven began sketching his Quartet in B flat in May or June 1825, and it’s clear that he intended it from the outset as something imposing. He scribbled his intentions on his sketchbook: ‘the last quartet with a serious and weighty introduction’; ‘last movement of the quartet in B flat fugha’. ‘Art demands of us that we shall not stand still,’ he told the violinist Karl Holz around this time. ‘Thank god there is less lack of fantasy than ever before.’ By August 1825 he’d composed five movements and expected to have the quartet completely finished within a matter of days. In fact the fugal finale took him a further four months of intensive work, and it was 3 January 1826 before Ignaz Schuppanzigh’s string quartet finally tried playing it through at Beethoven’s apartment. They were astonished by its difficulty. Holz, as second violinist, grumbled to Beethoven that it ‘must be practised at home’, something he clearly saw as unprecedented. Schuppanzigh’s group gave the first public performance in Vienna on 21 March 1826, and the audience’s qualified admiration turned to bafflement at this colossal fugue. ‘Incomprehensible … a sort of Chinese puzzle’, wrote the critic of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. ‘A confusion of babel’,
and something ‘that only the Moroccans might enjoy’ were some of the choicer comments. At the request of his publisher Matthias Artaria, Beethoven wrote an alternative finale for the quartet, and published the Grosse Fuge (as it’s become known) separately as Op. 133. When performed with the Grosse Fuge, the quartet’s first five movements are merely a prelude to this stupendous finale – at 741 bars, longer than the other five movements combined. Unsurprisingly, then, the Grosse Fuge, with its stark introductory Overtura and pair of colossal, converging fugues linked by a central interlude, has lent itself to endless interpretations, although after Beethoven’s death it would not be performed again until the 1850s. The first arrangements for string orchestra appeared the following decade, and have acquired currency in their own right as a means of approaching this most uncompromising of chamber works. Nothing, after all, can blunt its originality and power. A century later Igor Stravinsky described it as ‘the most absolutely contemporary piece of music I know, and contemporary forever’.
Ludwig van Beethoven Ah! Perfido, Op. 65 When, in 1792, the 22-year Beethoven left his native Bonn to study in Vienna, his patron Count Waldstein urged that he should ‘by diligent study, receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn’. And one field in which Mozart excelled was that of the concert aria. Mozart wrote more than 50 such stand-alone arias, and he regarded them as supreme tests of his artistry, remarking that he ‘liked an aria to fit its singer like a well-tailored suit’.
Beethoven didn’t think in quite those terms, and he wrote only a handful of concert arias. But this one, the most celebrated of all, has a particular connection to Mozart: Beethoven wrote it in Prague in the spring of 1796 for Countess Josephine de Clary, but it was performed in Leipzig on 21 November that year by Josefa Duschek: the soprano for whom Mozart had written his own concert aria Bella mia fiamma in 1787. In many ways, Beethoven follows Mozart’s formula –
Ah! Perfido text
creating a miniature operatic scene in three parts. A dramatic introduction throws us into the action in mid-flow: the soprano assumes the persona of a wronged lover, denouncing her faithless beloved (the text of this section was an off-the-peg lyric, taken from Achille in Sciro by Pietro Metastasio: the 18th
century’s most admired tragic librettist). She pleads for him to stay, in a broad, expressive aria, and finally – with the words ‘Ah crudel!’ (Oh, cruel one!) races off into a final denunciation that combines moments of deep pathos with a flashing brilliance perfectly tailored to help any soprano bring the house down.
Ah! perfido, spergiuro, barbaro traditor, tu parti? e son questi gl’ultimi tuoi congedi? ove s’intese tirannia più crudel? Va, scelerato! va, pur fuggi da me, l’ira de’ Numi non fuggirai! Se v’è giustizia in Ciel, se v’è pietà, congiureranno a gara tutti a punirti! Ombra seguace! presente, ovunque vai, vedrò le mie vendette; io già le godo immaginando; i fulmini ti veggo già balenar d’intorno. Ah no! ah no! fermate, vindici Dei! risparmiate quel cor, ferite il mio! s’ei non è più qual era son’io qual fui, per lui vivea, voglio morir per lui.
Ah! treachery and falsehood! Deaf to my anguished cries, you leave me? Are these lame excuses your words of parting? How can you bear to deal me such a cruel blow? Go, wretched creature! Go, escape while you may! But you will never escape heavenly anger! And if the gods are just, if they are kind, they will conspire as rivals to see you punished! They shall avenge me! Wherever you are hiding, your torment will inspire me… It gives me pleasure to imagine the thunderbolts of heaven rain down on you in fury … Ah no! Ah no! You gods of vengeance, be patient! Spare the man that I love: the pain is mine now! Though I mean nothing to him, I cannot forget him; I lived for his sake and I shall die without him.
Per pietà, non dirmi addio, di te priva che farò? tu lo sai, bell’idol mio! io d’affanno morirò.
Ah, my love, how can you leave me, leave me here to weep and sigh? You must know that I will suffer, that in torment I will die.
Ah crudel! tu vuoi ch’io mora! tu non hai pietà di me? perchè rendi a chi t’adora così barbara mercè? Dite voi, se in tanto affanno non son degna di pietà?
Ah, you scorn my tears of anguish! Are you glad that I should die? You reject the love I offer and you laugh to see me cry? Gods in heav’n, am I not worthy of compassion in my plight?
Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782), from Achille in Sciro (1736)
English translation by David Parry
Programme notes continued
Ludwig van Beethoven Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II
The texts and translations are on the next page.
Emperor Joseph II died in Vienna on 20 February 1790, aged 48 – exhausted by his efforts to reform his realm in line with Enlightenment ideals. A philosopher of sorts, he died in the belief that his life’s work had been in vain. “Here lies Joseph II, unhappy in all his enterprises” read his self-penned epitaph. But for followers of the Enlightenment across the Holy Roman Empire, Joseph had embodied modernity and hope, and his death was sincerely mourned. Among the mourners were the members of the Lesegesellschaft (Reading Society) in Bonn – a society devoted to Enlightenment thought whose members included Beethoven’s patron Count Waldstein, as well as his teacher Joseph Neefe. At a meeting of the Society on 28 February 1790, Professor Eulogius Schneider proposed that they mount a ceremony of remembrance the following month. He already had a text – a poem by his theology student Severin Anton Averdonk, then aged 20 – and he suggested that they commission one of the “excellent musicians from among our ranks” to set it to music. As student, the 19-year old Beethoven was ineligible for membership of the Society, but his friends argued for him, and he was commissioned to write a mourning Cantata without delay. Not for the last time, Beethoven exceeded expectations. The day of the commemoration came and went. Three months later in June, another member reported that “As far as the music is concerned, Beethoven has produced such a densely written sonata on the death of Joseph II - the text is by Averdonk - that it can only be performed here by a full orchestra or other similar body.” It was so
far beyond the capacity of Bonn’s musicians that it was never performed in Beethoven’s lifetime. And yet it might be Beethoven’s first truly original masterpiece. Averdonk’s text is the work of a young Romantic, filled with poetic imagery – sighing breezes, nocturnal graveyards, the echoing waves of the sea - designed to evoke pity as well as awe. Beethoven responded in a similar spirit: it’s remarkable to think that the great, sombre C minor processional that opens and closes the Cantata actually pre-dates Mozart’s Requiem. The people cry out; the soloists add their own individual songs of grief. This is an act of mourning, if not for a democratic age, exactly, then by a composer with unmistakably democratic leanings. After that monumental opening, the mood shifts to vivid action: a stormy recitative and a brilliant aria dramatize Joseph’s victorious struggle with the “monster Fanaticism”, and to serene woodwinds, humanity follows him onto the sunlit uplands, in a tranquil soprano aria with chorus. But faced with the reality of death, the mood turns dark: the poet imagines himself standing by night at Joseph’s graveside (Beethovemn gently sketches in the nocturnal breezes). Solo woodwinds twine like garlands around Hier schlummert, a tender and deeply expressive eulogy to the unhappy ruler. And with a final shift of perspective, we return to the ceremony of mourning. The opening chorus plays itself out before a final retreat into hushed C minor darkness. Programme notes © Richard Bratby
Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II text
1 Chorus with solo quartet Todt, stöhnt es durch die öde Nacht! Felsen weinet es wieder! und ihr, Wogen des Meeres, heulet es durch eure Tiefen: Joseph der grosse ist todt! Joseph, der Vater unsterblicher Thaten, ist todt! ach todt!
Death, groan it through the barren night! Cliffs cry it again! And you, waves of the sea, howl it through your deeps: Joseph the great is dead! Joseph, the father of immortal deeds, is dead! Alas dead!
2 Bass recitative Ein Ungeheuer, sein Name Fanatismus, stieg aus den Tiefen der Hölle, dehnte sich zwischen Erd’ und Sonne, und es ward Nacht!
A monster, Fanaticism by name, arose from the depths of hell, stretched itself twixt earth and sun, and night fell!
3 Bass aria Da kam Joseph, mit Gottes Stärke, riss das tobende Ungeheuer weg, weg zwischen Erd’ und Himmel, und trat ihm auf’s Haupt,
Then came Joseph, with the strength of God, tore the raging monster forth, forth from between earth and heaven, and trampled on its head.
4 Soprano aria with chorus Da stiegen die Menschen an’s Licht, da drehte sich glücklicher die Erd’ um die Sonne, und die Sonne wärmte mit Strahlen der Gottheit!
Then mankind climbed into the light, earth turned more happily round the sun, and the sun warmed it with godly rays.
5 Soprano recitative Er schläft von den Sorgen seiner Welten entladen. Still ist die Nacht, nur ein schauerndes Lüftchen weht wie Grabes Hauch mir an die Wange. Wessen unsterbliche Seele du seist, Lüftchen, wehe leiser! Hier liegt Joseph im Grabe und schlummert im friedlichen Schlaf’ entgegen dem Tage der Vergeltung, wo du, glückliches Grab, ihn zu ewigen Kronen gebierst.
He sleeps, freed from the cares of his world. Still is the night, only a shuddering breeze touches my cheek like the breath of the grave. Whoever’s immortal soul you may be, O breeze, blow gently! Here lies Joseph in his grave and slumbers in peaceful sleep until the day of reckoning when you, blest grave, deliver him to eternal crowns.
6 Soprano aria Hier schlummert seinen stillen Frieden der grosse Dulder, der hienieden kein Röschen ohne Wunde brach, der grosse Dulder, der unter seinem vollen Herzen das Wohl der Menschheit, unter Schmerzen bis an sein Lebensende trug.
Here slumbers in his quiet peace the great sufferer who on this earth plucked no rose without pain, the great sufferer who, with his full heart, bore to his life’s end with pain the cares of mankind.
7 Chorus with solo quartet Todt, stöhnt es durch die öde Nacht! Felsen weinet es wieder! und ihr, Wogen des Meeres, heulet es durch eure Tiefen: Joseph der grosse ist todt! Joseph, der Vater unsterblicher Thaten, ist todt! ach todt!
Death, groan it through the barren night! Cliffs cry it again! And you, waves of the sea, howl it through your deeps: Joseph the great is dead! Joseph, the father of immortal deeds is dead! Alas dead!
Severin Anton Averdonk (1768–1817)
Recommended recordings
Recommended recordings by Laurie Watt Beethoven: King Stephen Overture Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra | Herbert von Karajan (DG Galleria) or The Hanover Band (BMG) Beethoven: Grosse Fuge Australian Chamber Orchestra | Richard Tognetti (ABC Classics) Beethoven: Ah! Perfido Christiane Karg | Arcangelo | Jonathan Cohen (Berlin Classics) Beethoven: Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II Soloists inc. Andrew Foster-Williams San Francisco Symphony Orchestra & Chorus Michael Tilson Thomas (SFS Media)
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