Season 2020111111----2020202011112222

The

Thursday, January 1919,, at 8:00 Friday, January 202020,20 ,,, at 222:002:00:00:00 SaturSaturday,day, January 212121,21 , at 888:008:00:00:00

Herbert Blomstedt Conductor

Beethoven No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 I. Allegro con brio II. Largo III. Rondo: Allegro—Presto

Intermission

Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 (“Eroica”) I. Allegro con brio II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai III. Scherzo (Allegro vivace) and Trio IV. Finale: Allegro molto—Andante—Presto

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Born in Springfield, MA, in 1927, Herbert Blomstedt moved with his family to Sweden in 1929 and later attended the in Stockholm and the University of Uppsala. He studied contemporary music at and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, also continuing his studies with in Salzburg, with Jean Morel at Juilliard, and with at . Honors and accomplishments followed quickly: in 1953 the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize; in 1954 his conducting debut (with the Stockholm Philharmonic) and first appointment as a music director (with Sweden’s Norrköping Symphony); and in 1955 first prize at the Salzburg conducting competition.

Mr. Blomstedt is conductor laureate of the , where he served as music director from 1985 to 1995. His recordings with the ensemble, which include complete cycles of the Nielsen and Sibelius symphonies, have been awarded a Grand Prix du Disque, a German Record Critics Award, a Gramophone Award, and two Grammy awards. From 1975 to 1985 he was chief conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle, during which time he led that orchestra in its first visits to the U.S. and on many recordings, including complete cycles of the Beethoven and Schubert symphonies. Mr. Blomstedt also served as music director of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony and, from 1998 to 2005, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of . During his time in Leipzig he led a number of recordings, including Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, Sandström’s High Mass, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The German label Querstand has released a set of live recordings from throughout his tenure with the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Mr. Blomstedt is currently honorary conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the NHK Symphony, the Danish and Swedish radio symphonies, and the .

Mr. Blomstedt’s many distinctions include membership in the Royal Musical Academy of Stockholm, and several honorary doctorates. He has also been awarded Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for the advancement of American music, Austria’s Prize, and Denmark’s Prize. In 2003 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit by German President Johannes Rau. Mr. Blomstedt made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1987.

This season Leif Ove Andsnes performs works of Beethoven with the Swedish and Norwegian chamber ; the Trondheim, BBC, and Vienna symphonies; and in North America with the Pittsburgh, Montreal, and Boston symphonies. With the he has begun a multi-year Beethoven performing and recording project for Sony Classical. Other highlights of the 2011-12 season include performances of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Hannover's NDR Radio Philharmonic, Japan's NHK Symphony, and the Bergen Philharmonic, and a spring recital tour in the U.S. with baritone . Mr. Andsnes will also serve as music director of the 2012 in California.

Mr. Andsnes is an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist. His discography comprises more than 30 discs for EMI Classics, including, most recently, Rachmaninoff's Third and Fourth piano concertos with the London Symphony and a disc of Schumann's complete piano trios with violinist and cellist Tonja Tetzlaff. Mr. Andsnes’s other recordings include works of Grieg, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff; a series of Schubert discs with tenor ; and world-premiere recordings of works by Marc-André Dalbavie and Bent Sørensen, paired with music of Lutosławski and Kurtag. He has been nominated for seven Grammy awards and has been awarded five Gramophone awards.

Mr. Andsnes was born in Karmøy, , in 1970, and studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under Jiří Hlinka; he has also worked with Jacques de Tiège. Mr. Andsnes has received the Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav as well as Norway’s Peer Gynt Prize. He has also been awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's Instrumentalist Award and the Gilmore Artist Award. Mr. Andsnes currently lives in Copenhagen and Bergen, and also spends time at his mountain home in Norway's western Hardanger area. He is a professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in , a visiting professor at the Royal Music Conservatory of Copenhagen, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In June 2010 he achieved one of his proudest accomplishments to date, as he became a father for the first time. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1997.

FRAMING THE PROGRAM

“O you men who think or say that I am hostile, peevish, or misanthropic, how greatly you wrong me.” So Beethoven lamented in a long (and apparently unsent) letter that he wrote to his two brothers in the fall of 1802. This is the beginning of the so-called Heiligenstadt Testament in which the composer poured out his heart concerning the harrowing personal and professional consequences of his loss of hearing. By age 31 Beethoven had emerged as the great new light on the European musical scene, but now disaster loomed.

The concert today presents two compositions—two great thirds—written in the immediate aftermath of the Heiligenstadt Testament: the Third Piano Concerto and the Third Symphony, which Beethoven entitled the “Heroic Symphony.” Both works initially challenged performers, audiences, and critics because of their length, difficulty, and “bizarre” effects. But within a few years most had recognized their greatness and how in particular the “Eroica” Symphony had changed the course of orchestral music.

Parallel Events 1801802222 Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 Music Haydn Harmoniemesse Literature Chateaubriand René Art Canova Napoleon Bonaparte History Herschel discovers binary stars

1803 Beethoven Symphony No. 3 Music Spohr No. 1 Literature Schiller Der Braut von Messina Art West Christ Healing the Sick History Louisiana Purchase

Piano Concerto No. 3

Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, probably December 16, 1770 Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827

While Mozart did not invent the piano concerto, he was the one to bring it to prominence and the first to create enduring musical monuments. He served as an inspiring model for the young Beethoven and comparisons between them started early. An important music journal announced that the 12-year-old prodigy “would surely become a second if he were to continue as he has begun.”

At 16 Beethoven left his native Bonn to go to Vienna in the hopes of studying with his idol. He is said to have played for Mozart and allegedly earned his approving remark, “Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.” Beethoven was soon called home, however, to tend to his gravely ill mother and remained in Bonn for the next five years. In 1792, with assistance from the Elector Maximilian Franz and Count Waldstein, Beethoven won the chance to return to Vienna. Mozart had recently died and Haydn would be his teacher. Waldstein informed Beethoven, “With the help of assiduous labor you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.”

The Virtuoso as Composer After studies with Haydn and others, Beethoven began to mold his public career. As Mozart had found some two decades earlier, piano concertos offered the ideal vehicle to display multiple performing and composing gifts. Beethoven put off publication of his piano concertos, reserving them for his private use. The conductor and composer Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried relates an anecdote with respect to the Third Piano Concerto that highlights its function for the composer. At the premiere, Beethoven asked his friend to turn pages for him. But Seyfried reports:

Heaven help me! That was easier said than done. I saw almost nothing but empty leaves; at the most on one page or the other a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all of the solo part from memory, since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to put it all down on paper. He gave me a secret glance whenever he was at the end of one of the invisible passage and my scarcely concealable anxiety not to miss the decisive moment amused him greatly.

In April 1801 the 30-year-old Beethoven wrote to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig: “In this connection I wish to add that one of my first concertos [the B-flat major, Op. 19] and therefore not one of my best works, is to be published by Hofmeister, and that Mollo is to publish a concerto [the C major, Op. 15] which indeed was written later, but which also does not rank among the best of my works in this form.” After playing his first two concertos for years in many places, Beethoven was clearly becoming dissatisfied. He had progressed considerably in his musical thinking. He may have already begun his next piano concerto, a work that was long thought to have been composed around the turn of the century, but that recent research suggests took shape mostly in 1802 and early 1803, around the time of the “Eroica” Symphony and the Heiligenstadt Testament, the remarkable letter (never sent) that Beethoven wrote to his brothers in which he despaired over encroaching deafness.

First Impressions The confusion over the time of the Third Concerto’s genesis seems appropriate because the work is transitional between Beethoven’s so-called early and middle styles. He premiered the Concerto in April 1803, at a concert that also included the First and Second symphonies and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. (Concerts in Vienna, especially Beethoven’s, were often quite long in those days.) While the initial reaction to this performance was decidedly mixed, within a few years the Concerto was regarded as one of the composer’s finest creations: “It will and must have the greatest and most beautiful effect everywhere that it can be well performed,” noted the prestigious Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.

This same lengthy review concluded with an observation about surface virtuosity and compositional depth that quite vividly indicates how some critics were already recognizing that Beethoven was breaking new ground:

The Concerto demands an orchestra that is capable of much, wants the best, and, in order also to accomplish that truly, understands what it plays. It also demands a capable soloist, who, in addition to all that is customarily called virtuosity, also has knowledge in his head and a heart in his breast—otherwise, even with the most extraordinary skill and assurance, exactly that which is most excellent will be left behind.

This keen perception points to the changes in the stature and conception of instrumental music that the mature Beethoven helped to bring about. Music was not simply to be enjoyed, but also understood, and this required new attitudes on the part of performers and audience alike.

A Closer Look While many Classical features of his earlier piano concertos remain, the Third Concerto is a darker, subtler piece. It is in C minor—the key of the Fifth Symphony and the —and also of Mozart’s great Piano Concerto No. 24, K. 491. The openings of both concertos are, in fact, remarkably similar: Strings softly outline the chords of the C-minor triad, followed by woodwinds and then the full, loud orchestra (AllegroAllegro con briobrio). We most associate military music with Beethoven’s final piano concerto, the “Emperor,” but as musicologist Leon Plantinga has remarked, all of the concertos make use of military elements, here beginning with this imposing opening, which contrasts with a more brooding, lyrical second theme, which it seems was based on a theme by the long-forgotten composer Johann Sterkel.

The Largo begins with the solo piano intoning rich chords with a hymn-like character evoking an Arcadian realm. The movement becomes increasingly free and improvisatory. The piano also initiates the playful AlAlAllegroAl legrolegro————PrestoPresto finale. Beethoven’s amusing conclusion to the piece slows down the pace momentarily as the piano, in an effect Beethoven had earlier used in the introduction to the last movement of the First Symphony, teasingly presents a series of scales, the last one of which tips over into a lively coda in a new key, meter, and tempo.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Beethoven composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 from 1802 to 1803.

The Third Concerto was first performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra in December 1914, with pianist and Carl Pohlig on the podium. Most recently on subscription concerts, Jonathan Biss performed the work in April 2009, with Stéphane Denève conducting.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has recorded the work three times: in 1947 for CBS, with and ; in 1953 for CBS, with and Ormandy; and in 1971 for RCA, with Van Cliburn and Ormandy.

The score calls for an orchestra of two , two , two , two , two horns, two , , and strings, in addition to the solo piano.

Performance time is approximately 35 minutes.

SymphonSymphonyy No. 3 (“Eroica”)

Ludwig vvvanvan Beethoven

The “Eroica” Symphony represents a turning point not only in Beethoven’s career, but also in the history of music, a stature shared by few other compositions. The work raises fascinating issues: the personal circumstances of its genesis at a crucial juncture in Beethoven’s life; its relationship to the political events of the day, specifically to Napoleon; and the ways in which audiences at the time first received what many found to be a “horribly long” and “most difficult” piece of music.

It is striking that early listeners and critics, those writing during the initial 10 years or so of the work’s existence, did not talk about the issues most often discussed today: the Symphony’s relation to Beethoven’s life or to Napoleon. They viewed the “Eroica” as a bizarre but original composition, more sublime than beautiful. Its unprecedented length, technical challenges, and uncompromising aesthetic stance seemed to aim beyond entertainment, forcing Beethoven’s contemporaries to rethink what a symphony should be and do.

A Personal Turning Point During the summer of 1802 Beethoven’s doctor suggested that he move to the Vienna suburb of Heiligenstadt so as to escape the heat and hassles of the big city. It was there, in the early fall, that he poured out his heart in an unsent letter to his brothers:

O you men who think or say that I am hostile, peevish, or misanthropic, how greatly you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause that makes me seem so to you. From childhood on, my heart and soul were full of tender feeling of goodwill, and I was always inclined to accomplish great deeds. But just think, for six years now I have had an incurable condition, made worse by incompetent doctors, from year to year deceived with hopes of getting better, finally forced to face the prospect of a lasting infirmity (whose cure will perhaps take years or even be impossible).

This so-called Heiligenstadt Testament has exerted a tremendous influence on posterity’s view of Beethoven. The anguished words also had a powerful effect on the understanding of his music, especially a work like the “Eroica,” which seems to express in music the struggles that the composer, never a fluent writer, had tried to put in prose.

A New Path The “Eroica” launched the middle period of Beethoven’s career, which lasted for roughly a dozen years. These were years of astounding—one could say heroic— productivity: “I live only in my notes, and with one work barely finished, the other is already started; the way I write now I often find myself working on three, four things at the same time.” His problems were initially hidden, denied, and fought, but by 1806 Beethoven wrote in a sketch: “Let your deafness no longer be a secret—even in art.”

Beethoven began the Symphony around the time he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament, and did the most concentrated work beginning in May 1803, some seven months later. It was the first of his symphonies for which he gave public indications of an extra-musical program. Originally he planned to dedicate it to Napoleon and call it Bonaparte . Disillusioned when the French military leader crowned himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven so vigorously scratched out the title that his pen tore the manuscript paper. In the end, the work was published as “ Sinfonia Eroica … composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.” It was initially heard in private and semi-private performances, the first of which took place in August 1804 at the Viennese palace of his patron, Prince Lobkowitz, to whom the work is dedicated. The public premiere was on April 7, 1805, at the .

First Hearings The early reviews show that critics wanted to praise the composer and work, but were often confused by what he was trying to do. One commented that general opinion was sharply divided:

One group, Beethoven’s very special friends, maintains that precisely this symphony is a masterpiece, that it is in exactly the true style for more elevated music, and that if it does not please at present, it is because the public is not sufficiently educated in art to be able to grasp all of these elevated beauties. After a few thousand years, however, they will not fail to have their effect. The other group utterly denies this work any artistic value and feels that it manifests a completely unbounded striving for distinction and oddity, which, however, has produced neither beauty nor true sublimity and power.

The critic goes on to discuss a “middle” group of commentators, who admire its many excellent qualities, but are dismayed at the disjointed surroundings and at the “endless duration of this longest and perhaps most difficult of all symphonies, which exhausts even connoisseurs and becomes unbearable for the mere amateur.”

Within a couple of years, however, the tone began to change. It often takes time before musicians and the public feel comfortable with the demands of difficult new music. In the case of the “Eroica,” as a Leipzig critic remarked, “One must not always wish only to be entertained,” a sentiment echoed by another: “But the connoisseur will only enjoy it as a complete work (and a repeated hearing doubles his spiritual enjoyment) the deeper he penetrates into the technical and aesthetic content of the original work.” Musicians in particular seem to have gone out of their way to embrace “this most difficult of all symphonies.” Regarding a Leipzig performance in 1807, we are informed that “the orchestra had voluntarily gathered for extra rehearsals without recompense, except for the honor and special enjoyment of the work itself.” A few years later a critic commented that the Symphony “was performed by the orchestra with unmistakable enjoyment and love.”

A Closer Look The innovations of the “Eroica” begin with the two striking tonic chords of the first movement (AllegroAllegro con briobrio), ushering in a sweet cello melody that is soon derailed by an unexpected note—C sharp—which does not belong to the “home key.” The motivic, metric, and harmonic surprises continue throughout this lengthy movement. A “new theme” (in fact related to the opening) appears during the development that has elicited comment for two centuries now. There are other unexpected details: The seems to enter prematurely in the recapitulation, an effect that Beethoven’s contemporaries initially thought to be a mistake.

The second movement (AdagioAdagio assaiassai) is a funeral march and one of the most influential pieces of music Beethoven ever composed. Schubert alluded to it in two late works (his song “Auf dem Strom” and in the second movement of his Piano Trio in E-flat) to honor Beethoven’s death, just 20 months before his own. Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and others would also write marches, often funereal in character, within their symphonies that can in many ways be traced back to Beethoven. The C-minor opening presents the somber theme in the violins, over a drum-like bass, that is taken up by the . The tone brightens at moments in the movement, notably in sections in major keys, but also becomes more austere with a fugal passage of extraordinary intensity. The opening theme returns at the end, deconstructed so that only fragments remain.

An energetic scherzo (AllegroAllegro vivacevivace) changes the tone (confusing some commentators— why the mirth after a funeral?), but not the intensity. Beethoven plays with metric ambiguities—is the movement in duple or triple time?—and also gives the French horns a chance to shine in the middle trio section.

Beethoven employs another formal innovation for the finale (AllegroAllegro moltomolto), which he casts as an unusual set of variations. The theme takes some time to emerge, with initially only its harmonic skeleton given in the bass. For the theme proper Beethoven returned to a melody he had already used in three previous pieces: in one of his contredanses, in his ballet music for The Creatures of Prometheus, and as the theme for the Piano Variations in E-flat, Op. 35. Beethoven referred to these as the “Prometheus” Variations and the work is closely related to the last movement of the Symphony. Indeed, as Lewis Lockwood has observed, the finale was conceived of first and became the “springboard” for the entire work. It seems natural that Beethoven was attracted to—dare we say identified with?— Prometheus, the rebellious Greek Titan who incurred the wrath of the gods of Mount Olympus by stealing their sacred fire. Prometheus resisted, took risks, and suffered in order to help humanity. That mythic hero’s music provides a fitting conclusion for this heroic symphony.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Beethoven composed his “Eroica” Symphony in 1803.

Fritz Scheel conducted the first Philadelphia Orchestra performances of the work, in January 1903. Its most recent appearance on a subscription series was in March 2010, with Vladimir Jurowski conducting. The “Eroica” has become one of the most frequently performed works by the Orchestra, appearing almost every season, and the work was chosen to be performed in memory of both Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. Among the distinguished conductors who have led the Symphony with the Philadelphians are , , Clemens Krauss, Eugene Ormandy, , , , , , , , , Klaus Tennstedt, , Wolfgang Sawallisch, , and .

The Orchestra has recorded the “Eroica” three times: in 1961 with Ormandy for CBS; in 1980 with Ormandy for RCA; and in 1987 with Muti for EMI, the first complete recording of the Beethoven symphonies on compact disc.

The work is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

The Third Symphony runs approximately 50 minutes in performance.

Program notes © 2012. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

GENERAL TERMS Cadence: The conclusion to a phrase, movement, or piece based on a recognizable melodic formula, harmonic progression, or dissonance resolution : A passage or section in a style of brilliant improvisation, usually inserted near the end of a movement or composition Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones Chromatic: Relating to tones foreign to a given key (scale) or chord Coda: A concluding section or passage added in order to confirm the impression of finality Development: See sonata form Fugue: A piece of music in which a short melody is stated by one voice and then imitated by the other voices in succession, reappearing throughout the entire piece in all the voices at different places Meter: The symmetrical grouping of musical rhythms Op.: Abbreviation for opus, a term used to indicate the chronological position of a composition within a composer’s output. Opus numbers are not always reliable because they are often applied in the order of publication rather than composition. Recapitulation: See sonata form RRRondo:Rondo: A form frequently used in symphonies and concertos for the final movement. It consists of a main section that alternates with a variety of contrasting sections (A-B-A-C-A etc.). Scale: The series of tones which form (a) any major or minor key or (b) the chromatic scale of successive semi-tonic steps Scherzo: Literally “a joke.” Usually the third movement of symphonies and quartets that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Sonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then “developed.” In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications. Tonic: The keynote of a scale Triad: A three-tone chord composed of a given tone (the “root”) with its third and fifth in ascending order in the scale Trio: See scherzo

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo) Adagio: Leisurely, slow Allegro: Bright, fast Andante: Walking speed Con brio: Vigorously, with fire Largo: Broad Presto: Very fast Vivace: Lively

TEMPO MODIFIERS Assai: Much Molto: Very