PROGNOTE.DOC 13KB Jun 05 2011 09:30:21 PM

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Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Opus 43� � Piano Concerto Number 1, Opus 15, in C Major

Symphony Number 1, Opus 21, in C Major

Some points about tonight s music are easily summarized:�

All of them share the same key, C Major

All were first performed only a few years apart from each other at the beginning of the nineteenth century

All were written by a young man whom Vienna was already recognizing as well out of the ordinary.

Two of the three - the symphony and the concerto - are masterpieces, and the overture is not far behind.

All of them are wonderfully exciting to play and hear.

What cannot be so easily summarized is the complex character of the man who created them.

Whatever else can be said about Beethoven at this period of his life, lack of confidence was never one of his problems. About the time he was writing the

Prometheus music, he was sending off his B Flat Piano Sonata (Op. 22) to his

publisher with the happy prophecy, This, my dear brother, will wash! Also at the� � same time, in his notebook, he was writing, Courage! Despite all the weaknesses of� my body, my spirit shall rule. Here I am, twenty-five years old. This year must bring out the complete man.�

And what a man! Like all of us, he has his bad days: There are times in a � man s life that must be got through, somehow. He has a growing deafness to contend� � with: My ears whistle and buzz continually night and day, he writes to a � �

physician friend. For two years I have avoided almost all social gatherings � because it is impossible for me to say to people, I am deaf. Beethoven � � �

resolutely pushes aside the malady that is undermining his life: If I were only � rid of this affliction I could embrace the world. I will seize fate by the throat. Oh, it is so beautiful to live life a thousand-fold.�

He has his good days too. In London, four musicians, reading through Beethoven s first string quartets, shake their heads in wonder as one of them � remarks, At last, the equal of Mozart has arrived.� �

He is no one for half measures. Out for a stroll in his beloved countryside around Vienna, he becomes completely caught up in working out themes and theme developments in his head. His involuntary gesticulations are so violent that he terrifies the same yolk of oxen twice in one afternoon.

He writes furious letters to his publishers. But he can also comfort a recent widow and friend by turning up unbidden at her home, motioning her to a seat; and then, without a word being spoken, play for two hours so beautifully that the woman later tells a friend, Peace finally came to my soul.� �

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composer detours to the prince s palace, yanks open the front door, and shouts so � that he will be heard down all the corridors, Lobkowitz, you donkey!� �

And when he improvises at the piano, he can hold an audience breathless. Such was the complicated individual whose orchestral compositions from this period of his life are being performed here tonight. A few words about each: Beethoven wrote his Prometheus music for one Salvatore Vigano, a ballet dancer who commanded the same degree of adulation then that Balanchine enjoyed in our own day. One critic offered some faint praise for the sixteen sections and overture: The writing here is too learned for a ballet, and Beethoven pays too � little regard for the dancing. But musical Vienna turned out nonetheless for � nineteen performances, not only for the music but also because of its infatuation with Maria Xasentini, a great beauty and the principal ballerina of the Vienna Court Opera.

Beethoven published his First Piano Concerto in 1801. Delights are everywhere within, but the slow movement in particular belongs among the great legacy of slow movements this man wrote that touches souls everywhere. Beethoven wrote three separate cadenzas for it, one mark of the personal affection he felt for the work.

The First Symphony was completed in 1799 and dedicated to Baron Gottfried van Swieten, the librarian for Vienna s royal family. Again, there was a little �

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