Beethoven

Even in his youth, Ludwig van Beethoven, when appearing as a pianist, stunned audiences with the innovative nature of his style, his bravura and the expressiveness of his improvisations. In 1787, during a brief sojourn in Vienna, he visited Mozart and drew the latter’s admiration with his art. Following his eventual move to the Austrian capital, Beethoven won widespread acclaim, performing in the townhouses of philanthropic aristocrats, at concerts and at “academies” – as composers’ evenings with varied programmes were known – where composers introduced audiences to their latest works. The also included a demonstration of the composers’ performing abilities – they had to appear as the soloist in a concert work and improvise on a given theme. This is how Beethoven’s piano concerti appeared, and they opened a new chapter in the history of the genre.

The composer elevated the concerto to the level of the symphony and underlined the leading role played by the soloist, in each and every case uniquely and inimitably rethinking the comparison between the solo part and the orchestra. Forming a unique “portrait” of Beethoven at a specific stage in his life, the concerti give us a wonderful opportunity to follow the evolution of the composer’s creative style. For example, in his first two concerti – in C Major and particularly in B Flat Major, which in terms of the chronology of composition and performance preceded the former – there is still a clear “genetic” link to concerto works by Mozart and Haydn. But through the normal shading of a classical concerto, here the image of Beethoven himself can be distinguished: we cannot but notice the new scale of the entire composition, the new qualities of the dynamism of sound, the energy of development and the expression. The composer’s inventiveness is amazing in the finale of the first concerto, where we can distinctly make out Beethoven’s sheer “impertinence”, a kind of theme unfolding in A Minor. A decisive break came with the Third Concerto in C Minor. Beethoven presented a new concept in concerto music – here the contrast of the soloist and the orchestra take on a new dramatic meaning and serve as an expression of the conflicting content. According to Alfred Cortot, “the piano grows through the orchestra like an opponent in some heroic battle; the sound entrusted to him is so mighty and its development just as powerful as Beethoven’s interpretation of the orchestral mass.”

In the two last concerti the soloist’s priority is indicated in even greater relief thanks to the unusual introduction: instead of a traditional orchestral exposition, the Fourth Concerto in G Major actually begins with the pianist’s solo, while the Fifth Concerto in E Flat Major has a virtuoso cadenza that emerges following just one chord from the orchestra. The Concerto in G Major stands apart for its particularly lyrical structure, while the grandiose Fifth became known as the Emperor Concerto even during the composer’s lifetime. Dedicated to the Archduke Rudolf, an Archbishop, direct descendant of the Austrian monarchy, a captain and a brilliant musician, it surpassed everything that had yet been written for piano solo thanks to the capaciousness of its content, the intensity of the music, the heroic tone, the hitherto unknown power, the energy and the virtuoso scale of the solo part.

In 1809 Beethoven received a commission to compose music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tragedy Egmont based on the war of independence of the Netherlands, headed by Count Egmont, against Spanish rule. The composer approached the work with tremendous enthusiasm: the plot of the tragedy was close to Beethoven, who by that time had already turned to heroic images in his art on numerous occasions (the opera Fidelio and the Third and Fifth Symphonies). Ten numbers were composed which were lavishly praised by E.T.A. Hoffmann and approved of by Goethe himself, who declared the music to be “congenial” to his tragedy.

The overture, the first of these musical numbers, became most famous and independent on the concert platform. It is a brief “synopsis” of the dramatic plot of the tragedy. Two of its main images symbolise the resistance of each battling side: the theme in a low register with the characteristic rhythm of a saraband (the Spanish) finds a response in the theme of the woodwinds with their mournful intonations. As it develops, the Spanish theme takes centre-stage, dominating and suppressing the secondary theme, although the triumphantly exultant finale of the overture foretells the happy outcome of this battle, even though it is attained at the price of the death of a hero.
Nadezhda Kulygina