PROGRAMME:
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No 3 C Minor, Op. 37
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Symphony No 5, Op. 64
Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto was performed for the first time in Vienna by the composer on 5 April 1803, on the same evening as the oratorio Christ on the Mound of Olives and his First and Second Symphonies. The work is dedicated to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia – a military man and music-lover who soon after died in the Napoleonic Wars.
The time that the Concerto was written (1800-1803) was extremely hard for Beethoven: he had already accepted the inevitability of his increasing deafness, but had made peace with his lot. And so here the traditional concerto confrontation between the soloist and the orchestra emerges as a tragic scene of the battle of willpower against Fate.
An anonymous critic of the then powerful Leipzig music newspaper, Die Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, was unhesitant in his review of the concerto: “A true, grand concerto is one of those magnificent works that the great maestro has produced in the space of several years… Everywhere that it can be performed well it will and should have a huge and wonderful effect; even in places where, as in Leipzig, they have become accustomed to hearing Mozart’s great concerti.” And of the second section: “It is, of course, one of the most expressive instrumental pieces ever written, so rich in emotions. This section may be called an experiment in transforming the sadness of a noble soul, written with the most exquisitely refined nuances…”
The Fifth Symphony in E Minor, Op. 64, was composed by Tchaikovsky in the summer of 1888 in the village of Frolovskoe. It has no literary programme, but the theme that flows throughout, from the introduction of the first movement to the last bars of the finale, transforming from the gloomy into the triumphant, make one suspect that Tchaikovsky nevertheless had some kind of secret “plot” in mind.
Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of the Fifth Symphony in St Petersburg on 5 (17, Old Style) November 1888, and it soon won widespread acclaim abroad. This is linked to a curious episode, recorded by Tchaikovsky’s acquaintance Alina Ivanovna Bryullova: “They loved it particularly well in Hamburg, where the director of the music society was the kind and erudite old Theodor Avй-Lallemant, and he and Tchaikovsky somehow got on very well together. Apropos, in an instance of spiritual openness this Avй-Lallemant, an excellent musician, suddenly grasped Tchaikovsky’s hands and said ‘I have a tremendous favour to ask of you, if you will permit me to offer my advice: don’t use these wild Cossack melodies and different trepaks in amazing your works. Write in the spirit of our European music.’ Tchaikovsky, a very tactful man, merely smiled and in response dedicated his Fifth Symphony to him.”
It is not known if the elderly gentleman liked the finale. But he had to forgive the composer anything for the sake of the second movement with the inspired French horn solo and the third movement – a magnificent waltz.
Anna Bulycheva
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