program notes Beethoven in Vienna: A Concerto and a Symphony Near the end of 1792, a not-quite-22year-old Ludwig van Beethoven made the arduous, multi-stage journey via coach from Bonn, where he had been born in 1770, to Vienna. Beethoven had been encouraged to spend some time there studying with Haydn. In the process, he was also escaping the chaos that threatened Bonn from further to the West, where the French Revolution was expanding. In fact, French troops would occupy Bonn within two years, and Beethoven would never return. Bonn, though relatively small, was important as a political center and cultural crossroads. What the composer left behind there was a predictable career as a musician forced to wear the uniform of a servant and controlled by the whims of those who called the shots at court. In Vienna Beethoven would pursue a revolution of his own, inspired by his faith in the radical power of music to transform people. Vienna became home for the rest of Beethoven’s life—even if he moved restlessly within the city and its outlying regions, changing his address more than 60 times before he died in middle age, a victim of cirrhosis of the liver, in 1827. Vienna beckoned as one of the great musical centers of Europe, the capital of the vast Habsburg Empire. Mozart had died less than a year before; Haydn, a close friend and ally of P30
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Mozart, had emerged as a cultural giant, the most acclaimed composer in Europe. This is the backdrop for the famous remark made by Count Waldstein, an early patron of Beethoven, just before the composer set out from Bonn: “Through your unceasing hard work, you will receive Mozart’s spirit from the hands of Haydn.” But these deep connections with a living tradition also involved inherent rivalry—a drive to go beyond anything his predecessors had done. Beethoven was anything but a careless rulebreaker, despite the cliche—the breaking has no meaning if the “rules” are considered pointless to begin with—but he pressured the conventions and language he inherited to yield unprecedented discoveries and a new expressive intensity. The program that Maestra Valentina Peleggi has chosen illustrates Beethoven’s approach to his situation as a young composer in Vienna, working in formats that were closely identified with Mozart (the piano concerto) and Haydn (the symphony). “In some ways, the First Piano Concerto looks ahead into the future, while the Fourth Symphony casts a glance back to the past,” she observes. Comparisons and contrasts are even more noticeable because both scores call for the same instrumentation (aside from the solo piano): only one flute; pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horn, and trumpets; timpani; and strings. But using these relatively limited resources, Beethoven creates
