PROGRAM NOTES by Phillip Huscher

Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany. Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria.

Leonore Overture No. 2

Beethoven composed the Leonore Overture no. 2 in the fall of 1805; the first performance was given on November 20 of that year in Vienna. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings, and an offstage trumpet. Performance time is approximately fourteen minutes.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first subscription concert performances of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no. 2 were given at the Auditorium Theatre on November 18 and 19, 1892, with Theodore Thomas conducting. Our most recent subscription concert performances were given at Orchestra Hall on January 25, 26, and 27, 2007, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. The Orchestra first performed this overture at the Ravinia Festival on July 27, 1941, with Carlos Chávez conducting, and most recently on July 29, 1995, with Manfred Honeck conducting.

Nothing else in Beethoven’s career caused as much effort and heartbreak as the composition of his only opera, which took ten years, inspired four different overtures, and underwent two major revisions and a name change before convincing Beethoven that he was not a man of the theater. The history of the four overtures to Fidelio—or Leonore, the title Beethoven originally chose and always preferred—is nearly as complicated as that of the opera itself. Their sequence is further confused by the numbers mistakenly given to them after the fact, so that Beethoven’s first effort is now known as no. 2 and his second as no. 3. (An overture written for a production in Prague that never took place was discovered after Beethoven’s death, mistaken for his earliest effort, and called Leonore no. 1, thereby setting up this entire series of wrong numbers.)

This concert begins with the overture that was played at the premiere of Leonore in November 1805. Leonore no. 2, as it is known, represents Beethoven’s original thoughts on writing an opera overture, and, although it is a wildly impressive work, it surely was too much music for the task at hand, which was, after all, simply to quiet the crowd, raise the curtain, and set the stage for the drama to follow. Instead, Beethoven’s overture presents a drama all its own—and a powerful one at that, filled with magnificent music.

Beethoven revised the overture the following year, but made the same mistake: Leonore no. 3, too, overwhelms the opening scene of the opera, even though it’s a tighter and more polished work. With his final attempt, written in 1814, Beethoven found an ideal solution—the work we know as the overture to Fidelio is shorter and lighter, and it leads to the opera’s first number rather than upstaging it (it also is in E major, the dominant of the opera’s first key, while the Leonore overtures are in C major, the opera’s final tonal destination). The Fidelio overture is perfect stagecraft, but it is less important as music.

Leonore no. 2 is among Beethoven’s finest achievements. Both Leonore overtures no. 2 and the more familiar no. 3 tell the same story, but, Rashomon-like, in different ways. In essence, they are tone poems about the opera itself, and their general outlines are similar. Each begins in the darkness of the prison cell, where Florestan has been unjustly sent. Florestan remembers happier days and the music, ignited by his hope and thoughts of his beloved Leonore, is filled with fire and action. A distant trumpet call from the tower guard, announcing Florestan’s reprieve, brings silence and then guarded optimism, but when the trumpet sounds again, freedom is certain. Although the two overtures share a storyline, they emphasize different elements, linger over different details, and find separate paths through the same scenario. (In fact, all four of the opera’s overtures are so different that they are sometimes performed on the same program without seeming repetitious—a tradition that dates back to a concert conducted by Mendelssohn in 1840.)

In Leonore no. 2, Beethoven wrote lavishly, even daringly; it is a great testament to the freedom and power of his imagination, not yet hampered by the realities of working in the opera house. There is something wildly dramatic, for example, about plunging almost directly from the reprieve of the second trumpet call into the ecstatic coda (there’s no recapitulation at all, just a sudden mad dash for the ending). Leonore no. 3 may be the more perfect score, but Leonore no. 2 is one of music’s greatest examples of the audacity of genius and the sheer brilliance of first thoughts.

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

For the Record A 1957 Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no. 2 conducted by Fritz Reiner is included on From the Archives, vol. 11: The Reiner Era II.

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These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs subject to change without notice.