PROGRAM NOTES .
Program Notes BY DAVID B. LEVY
Ludwig van Beethoven
Overture to Goethe’s Egmont, Op. 84 (1809–1810) Scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
One of history’s pivotal composers, Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized (birth date unknown) on December 17, 1770, in Bonn, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. His Overture to Goethe’s drama Egmont was composed between 1809 and 1810. It, and the incidental music for the play to which it belongs, received its first performance on June 15, 1810, at Vienna’s Court Theater in the Hofburg. Given the hateful occupations of Vienna by Napoleonic troops, in 1805 and 1809 respectively, it should come as no surprise that Beethoven would be drawn to Goethe’s drama based on the life and heroic death of Lamoral, Count Egmont, a true historical figure who lived in the Netherlands from 1522 to 1568. Egmont was a nobleman who dared to voice his opposition to the harsh regime of the Spanish occupiers of his native land. Toward the end of the play, Egmont is captured and beheaded. Before his death he has a vision of his beloved Clärchen, who dies earlier in Goethe’s play. She is now united, in his mind’s eye, with the goddess of freedom. Just before his death, Egmont gives a rousing speech
in which he urges his fellow countrymen to continue their resistance against the Spaniards who occupy their homeland. Indeed, opposition to tyranny was a theme that also attracted Beethoven in 1803/1804 to compose his only opera, Leonore (revised in 1814 as Fidelio). The Overture to Egmont beautifully encapsulates the nature of the drama. It begins in f minor with a solemn introduction, whose sarabande-like rhythms may be seen as representative of the Spanish occupiers. The drama continues in the customary sonata-form structure, with the distinctive sarabande rhythm reappearing in the second key area. In the recapitulation, the sarabande is heard in its most ferocious manifestation, played loudly by the horns and cut off abruptly by the violins, indicating Egmont’s execution at the hand of his enemies. After a short transition, the work concludes with a stirring “Victory Symphony” in F Major— an appropriate apotheosis of Egmont’s heroic stance. ●
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra in B-flat Major, Op. 19 (1787–1789) Scored for solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, and strings.
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 was composed in 1796 and revised in 1800. The work is dedicated to Carl Nikl Edler von Nikelsberg (c. 1738–1805), a Bohemian-born minor official in Austria’s
As large an influence as Mozart may have been on the ambitious young Beethoven, he was eager to make an even bigger and bolder impression …
Commerce Office. Almost nothing is known of his connection to Beethoven, although he may have been helpful in gaining employment in Vienna for Beethoven’s brother Kaspar Karl. The date of its first performance is unknown, but Beethoven did perform it in Prague sometime in 1798. Despite its higher opus number, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 actually predates the Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 15. Sketch sources for the piece stretch back as far as 1790, i.e., before Beethoven departed his native Bonn for Vienna in 1792. Further sketches for all three movements, as well as ideas for a cadenza for the first movement, date from 1794 to 1795. The work underwent numerous additional revisions until it finally was published in Leipzig in 1801. The higher opus number, therefore, is merely the function of the order in which the works were published. If one wishes to seek a point of reference for this work, Mozart’s final Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in B-flat Major (same key as Op. 19), K. 595, serves as a perfect foil. Where Mozart’s example starts with a lyrical phrase in the orchestra followed by a martial response, Beethoven reverses the process by beginning with a march-like gesture followed by a lyrical answer. The difference in temperament between Mozart and Beethoven is more telling in the opening themes of the finales of both concertos. Mozart’s Rondo begins softly with a gently rollicking tune in 6/8 meter that dances along with childlike innocence. Beethoven, on the other hand, punches us in the proverbial nose with a loudly aggressive “short-long” figure, also in 6/8 meter, that places the short note on the downbeat and marking the second (longer) note with a sforzando accent. Surely this gesture shocked his audience by dint of its sheer audacity. Beethoven’s aesthetic reversals were by no means intended as a sign of disrespect for his predecessor, whose music he idolized. It should be seen, rather, as bold statements of independence. As Donald Francis Tovey once observed, Beethoven was a “small ‘r’” revolutionary. As Beethoven’s finale unfolds in well-behaved continued on 16
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