Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827 Piano Concerto No.4 in G op.58 1 I. Allegro moderato 18.49 2 II. Andante con moto 4.57 3 III. Rondo: Vivace 9.50 Symphony No.7 in A op.92 4 I. Poco sostenuto – Vivace 14.43 5 II. Allegretto 8.56 6 III. Presto 9.08 7 IV. Allegro con brio 6.49 73.14 Rotterdam Philharmonic orchestra Lahav Shani piano · conductor s there a composer, an artist, a historical figure, more burdened with the weight of cliché than our beloved Beethoven? The revolutionary. The spurned lover. The filthy, argumentative tyrant. The destroyer of pianos, a man who could hold a grudge for a lifetime. The romantic. The classicist. And yet the music itself is music wholly lacking in cliché, absolutely rooted in the tradition. Music completely free of banalities and formulas, perfectly suited to its era. The two pieces on this album both come from Beethoven’s so-called “middle period”. IThese incredibly fecund creative years are characterised by an expansion of forms and a focus on a small number of ideas rigorously developed and transformed. The classical harmonic tension contributes to the drive of the music as much as the rhythmic propulsion. This music features a clarity of texture and, above all, a unity between the melodic motive and the accompaniment. Beethoven in his time The composer as an idea, as the Artist, the man who demanded his just due, became typical of the Romantic era. This was quite different from the position composers occupied in European life prior to Beethoven. One need only think of Mozart traipsing around Europe in search of a crust, J.S. Bach churning out cantata after cantata, and Haydn slaving away for the Esterházys. Beethoven, however, demanded that he be accepted on his own terms. He was outraged if he wasn’t treated as an equal to his aristocratic patrons and was even willing to take them to court to receive the support they promised him. This was a man who knew his own worth. Around the time that Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto was written, Beethoven was so popular in Vienna that he was able to name his fee with his publishers. He wrote “…my compositions take in a lot, and I can say I have more orders than is almost possible for me to fill… one no longer negotiates with me, I demand and they pay.” So popular and esteemed was he at the time of his death on 26 March 1827 that some 20,000 people were said to have attended his funeral. He certainly wasn’t buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. Today his grave can be found in Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof cemetery. 3 The Premiere of the Fourth Piano Concerto The premiere of a new concerto by the most famous and esteemed composer of his time and place. What a memorable occasion this must have been! And indeed, it was the last time Beethoven performed as a pianist in public, some 19 years before his death at the age of 56. However, the rather long and extremely cold evening of 22 December 1808 was memorable for a few other premieres: the Choral Fantasy, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies! And a few other first performances: selections from the Mass in C Op.86 thrown in for good measure. What an overwhelming explosion of creative music given its first performance on one evening! Beethoven was considered one of the greatest pianists of his time, and perhaps the single greatest improviser. As his deafness became more and more serious, his performances in public became less frequent, and it is due to his deafness that the 1808 performance of this work was the last time he played in public. He continued to take the podium as a conductor, although his deafness certainly hindered him in this role. But such was the force of his will that he demanded to conduct the premieres of many of his later works. Many undignified stories of him wildly waving his hands out of time to the music from the podium survive to this day. Not only was the premiere of Op.58 the last time Beethoven performed as a pianist, it was also the first and only time this glorious staple of the repertoire was heard in public during his life. It wasn’t heard again until 1836, when it was revived by that great revivalist Felix Mendelssohn. Today it is one of the most beloved and oft-performed concertos in the entire repertoire. 4 The Music of the Fourth Piano Concerto Written in 1805–6, the Piano Concerto No.4 in G Op.58 was dedicated to Archduke Rudolf of Austria, one of Beethoven’s great patrons as well as his composition and piano student. It was Archduke Rudolf who ensured Beethoven’s financial support from very early on until his death in 1827. The love and gratitude that Beethoven must have felt for him is evident in the number of masterpieces he dedicated to his patron: the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos, the Piano Sonatas Opp. 3, 81 (“Les Adieux”) and 106 (“Hammerklavier”), the eponymous “Archduke” Piano Trio Op.97, the Violin Sonata Op.96, the Missa Solemnis and the Grosse Fuge. What a body of work for one dedicatee! This concerto is ground-breaking and special in many ways. Glenn Gould told the English musicologist Humphrey Burton that he felt we have too often “exaggerated the sense of the protagonist’s role in the concerto. We exaggerate the sense of dualism, as between orchestra and soloist, as between individual and mass.” The Fourth Concerto is certainly a case of integration rather than dualism, and this integration of soloist and orchestra is one of the great stylistic achievements of this piece. Beethoven himself told the great pianist Tomášek in 1814 that “the greatest pianists were the greatest composers, but how did they play? Not like the pianists of today, who only run up and down the keyboard with long-practiced passage work… the true virtuoso [plays it] as something integrated, something whole. That is real piano playing, the rest is nothing.” Indeed this could sum up the totality of Beethoven’s compositions: all parts integrated completely in the whole. Of the many innovative techniques introduced by Beethoven in his oeuvre, the famous opening measures of this concerto are perhaps the most understated: the solo pianist gently states the first theme before the orchestra answers. This is a great example of how Beethoven developed the forms of his predecessors. Beginning as one would expect in G major, the orchestra answers only a few bars later in B before modulating back to G. The gentle opening sets the tone for what is to follow, a concerto where the orchestra and soloist are not in opposition to one another, but are working together at all times to create a musical unity. 5 Of central importance here is the four-note rhythmic motif introduced by the piano. The rest of the movement will deftly explore this motive in both the melodic and accompaniment voices, a feature of Beethoven’s style of this period. In some ways it can be heard as a gentle counterpart to the fateful four-note motif of the first movement of his contemporaneous Fifth Symphony. The piano then remains silent throughout the rest of the orchestral exposition until it enters at the very end to begin its statement of the first theme. Throughout the movement there is a beautiful balance between glittering passage work, scales, arpeggios, trills and their relation to the whole. Not one note here exists to display virtuosity, yet how unmistakably virtuosic it is! After the cadenza, there is a short coda. Is there a more dramatic movement in instrumental music than the second movement of this concerto? It is a movement of contrast, with the declarative E minor unison string statement contrasted starkly with the exquisitely calm, pleading voice of the piano. The two voices never meet, with the strings remaining insistent, and the piano contemplatively alone in its own world, until the very end where the piano voice longingly resolves in E minor above the now becalmed strings. A dancing, syncopated melody begins the final movement, this time in the “wrong” key of C major. Once again Beethoven is thwarting our expectations, while retaining the tonal tensions of the classical style. By the entrance of the piano in G we have arrived in our home key again, but Beethoven will continue to modulate effortlessly throughout this movement. The contrast of textures is also wonderful here, between the syncopated, extraordinarily rhythmic first theme and the lyrical flowing second theme with its basso continuo accompaniment referencing baroque styles of concerto writing in this most modern of works. This movement again demonstrates the wonderful integration of pianist and orchestra, working together, sometimes interrupting one another, but never in opposition. 6 The Seventh Symphony The Seventh Symphony was also premiered in grandiose circumstances, at another famous concert, this time in 1813 fundraising for soldiers returning from the Battle of Hanau, an occasion of celebration as the weary Viennese saw the back of Napoleonic occupation and devastation. This time Beethoven was on the podium as conductor, a concert also featuring the first performance of Wellington’s Victory. Several of the greatest musicians of the day were in the orchestra, including the violinist–composer Louis Spohr, the composers Hummel, Meyerbeer and Salieri in the percussion section, and the phenomenal double-bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti. At the time, Wellington’s Victory was considered the greater success, but the Seventh Symphony has over time far overshadowed this so-called “Battle Symphony” to become one of the central works of the orchestral repertoire.