Beethoven's Emperor
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Grounded Elegance The curves of Freycinet Lodge’s new The pavilions are available from 15 Coastal Pavilions nestle into the bush, March 2018. RACT members enjoy immersing you in an elegant, yet a 25% accommodation discount at grounded natural experience. Freycinet Lodge. Beethoven’s the new coastal pavilions at freycinet Lodge Emperor Friday 9 March 7.30pm Federation Concert Hall Hobart MASTER 2 MASTER Marko Letonja conductor Nelson Freire piano BEETHOVEN SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Concerto No 5, Emperor Symphony No 9 Allegro Allegro Adagio un poco mosso – Moderato Rondo (Allegro) Presto – Duration 38 mins Largo – Allegretto INTERVAL Duration 27 mins Duration 20 mins This concert will end at approximately MAHLER arr BRITTEN 9.30 pm. What the Wild Flowers Tell Me Duration 10 mins Sponsored by freycinetlodge.com.au Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concerts are broadcast and streamed throughout (03) 6256 7222 DESTINATIONS by Australia and around the world by ABC Classic FM. We would appreciate your cooperation in keeping coughing to a minimum. Please ensure that your mobile phone is switched off. 10 11 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Piano Concerto No 5 in E flat, Op 73, Beethoven’s music. Biographer Maynard Emperor Solomon quotes Einstein as saying that Allegro the audience ‘expected a first movement Adagio un poco mosso – in four-four time of a military character; Rondo (Allegro) and they reacted with unmixed pleasure when Beethoven not only fulfilled but far Marko Letonja is Chief Conductor and Nelson Freire was born in Boa Esperança, in In May 1809 Napoleon’s armies occupied surpassed their expectations.’ Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony the state of Minas Gerais (Brazil). When he Vienna for the second time and with In the Fifth Concerto, Beethoven Orchestra, Music Director of the Orchestre was five, his family moved to Rio de Janeiro considerable violence. Beethoven took shelter with his brother Carl and his wife solved the problem of how to Philharmonique de Strasbourg and Music with he studied with Nise Obino and Lucia Johanna and to protect his failing hearing exploit the soloist’s virtuosity without downgrading the role of the orchestra, Director of the Bremen Philharmonic Branco. A finalist at the first International spent the bombardment of 11 and 12 May with pillows over his ears in the while constructing the kind of musical Orchestra from the start of the 2018-19 Piano Competition of Rio de Janeiro, cellar. argument and drama which was so crucial to the Classical style. This is achieved season. Born in Slovenia, he studied at the Nelson Freire received a grant from Brazilian Before, during and after the invasion and partly through masterstrokes like the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and the president Juscelino Kubitschek and went despite his misery, Beethoven managed very opening gesture: a single chord is Vienna Academy of Music. He was Music to study in Vienna under Bruno Seidlhofer, to work. He composed the Op 70 piano sounded by the orchestra, to which the trios and three piano sonatas including piano responds in such flamboyant style, Director of the Slovenian Philharmonic teacher of Friedrich Gulda. At 19, he was Op 81a, Das Lebewohl (Les Adieux) creating a sense of uncertainty about Orchestra from 1991 to 2003 and Music awarded the Dinu Lipatti Medal. He has which reflects Beethoven’s sorrow at how and when the orchestra will rejoin seeing his patron Archduke Rudolf Director and Chief Conductor of both the since performed in over 70 countries, and the music, and what form the actual leaving Vienna, as did so many of the thematic material will take. Symphony Orchestra and the Opera in Basel his recordings have won awards such as aristocracy during the invasion. He also A standard practice in much Classical from 2003 to 2006. He was Principal Guest the Diapason d’Or, Grand Prix du Disque, composed the String Quartet Op 74, popularly known as the Harp Quartet, music was to get louder and more Conductor of Orchestra Victoria in 2008 and and a Latin Grammy for the album Nelson and completed the Fifth Piano Concerto agitated in the lead-up to a point of structural significance, but Beethoven made his debut with the TSO the following Freire Brasileiro. Other honours include (also dedicated to Rudolf). Curiously, most of these are in the key of E flat – the made those moments even more year. He took up the post of Chief Conductor the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. key of The Magic Flute and other music dramatic. The overwhelming impression and Artistic Director of the TSO at the start of Nelson Freire has performed with orchestras where Mozart sought to create a sense left by the first movement of the Fifth Concerto is of ceremonial grandeur 2012. He has worked with many orchestras in such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York of solemnity, and one that Beethoven used at his most Promethean in works and pomp – hence the nickname Europe including the Munich Philharmonic, Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw like the Eroica Symphony. These works (not authorised by Beethoven) of Emperor. But the massive scale of the Vienna Symphony, Berlin Radio Orchestra, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and don’t bear any obvious resemblance to one another: the transcendent serenity of first movement is made possible by Mozarteum Orchestra and the Orchestra under conductors such as Valery Gergiev, the Harp Quartet seems miles away from the frequent contrast of the ‘military’ Filarmonica della Scala, Milan. He has also Pierre Boulez, Rudolf Kempe, Rafael Kubelik, the high style of the outer movements of (characteristic march rhythms) and the reflective. Beethoven prepares the worked in many renowned opera houses Kurt Masur, and Lorin Maazel. Forthcoming the concerto. But all of these works break new ground in some way. movement’s climactic moments with such as the Vienna State Opera, Berlin appearances include the Mariinsky Orchestra what scholar William Kinderman calls By this time Beethoven’s deafness made ‘the withdrawal of the music into a State Opera, La Scala Milan, Semper Oper with Gergiev at the Philharmonie, Berlin, it impossible for him to perform with mysterious stillness’. To prepare the Dresden and the Grand Théâtre de Genève. the Rotterdam Philharmonic with James an orchestra, so the concerto’s first moment of recapitulation, where the performance in Leipzig in 1811 was given Recent engagements include Der Ring des Conlon in Rotterdam and at the Amsterdam opening material returns, Beethoven by a young organist, Friedrich Schneider. allows the music to become rarefied and Nibelungen for the Royal Swedish Opera, Concertgebouw, and concerto and recital At the Viennese première in 1812, Carl serene: a passage of ever-quieter scales Boris Godunov for the Bavarian State Opera appearances in the US. His most recent Czerny was soloist. Given the political and trills gives way to a pastoral dialogue circumstances, it is hardly surprising that between the winds and the bell-tones of and Le nozze di Figaro for the Grand Théâtre recording is of Brahms’s Piano Sonata No 3 the concerto is, in Alfred Einstein’s words, the piano. de Genève. and a selection of shorter works. the ‘apotheosis of the military concept’ in 12 13 Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) Arranged by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) The short, central Adagio movement, rightly described as dreamlike by one writer, is in B major, which in terms of What the Wild Flowers Tell Me publisher, Erwin Stein, to make a version Classical tonal logic is a fair way away (second movement from Symphony No 3, of the second movement of the Third from the ‘home’ key of E flat. And its for reduced orchestra) Symphony for reduced orchestra. It was mood couldn’t be further from the published in 1950. Wisely, no doubt, Mahler removed military episodes, despite its material Unlike Mengelberg, Britten was not being dominated by the scales and trills the illustrative working titles of his Third Symphony (for which The Gay trying to improve Mahler’s orchestration. that featured in the first movement. It But Mahler’s music was as yet little- may have been a passage such as this Science, after Friedrich Nietzsche’s work, had been a leading contender) known in Britain, and ‘portable’ versions that Australian poet Gwen Harwood was of his works that did not call for the remembering when she wrote: and its constituent movements when he completed the work in 1896. massive resources required for some of Pain breaks upon Nevertheless, the ‘extramusical’ intent of his symphonies were plainly going to be these notes in splintering trills; here, the symphony was crucial to its genesis, easier to program. changed to song, if dispensable once the composition To embody Mahler’s cosmic vision, wears the calm aspect of divinity. begins to unfold, and Mahler explained the symphony requires an orchestra it to confidants like Bruno Walter and A justly celebrated instance of ‘the of quadruple winds, large brass and his protégée Natalie Bauer-Lechner. withdrawal of the music into a mysterious percussion sections, and a matching Composed, as was Mahler’s wont, on stillness’ occurs at the transition from body of strings. While this huge summer vacations amid sublime Alpine the slow movement into the finale. ensemble is used for overpoweringly scenery, the symphony would be ‘one The transition is almost imperceptible massive effects at times, it frequently gigantic hymn to the glory of every – Beethoven changes a note here or also allows a vast variety of diaphanous aspect of creation’ in which ‘all nature there to subtly change the direction of and iridescent sounds; Mahler, as Britten finds a voice’. Its six movements would the music as it seems to fade, and the realised very early, ‘knew what he wanted represent what summer, flowers, animals, piano begins ruminating on a common to the nth degree’.