deWaart + CSO + Beethoven = Good Listening!

Tonight at 7:00 on The Evening Concert it’s the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Edo de Waart guest conducts the group in an all-Beethoven program featuring

the 3rd Symphony, the (H)eroic and the Leonore Overture No. 3. Also on the program, Beethoven’s 6th Symphony with Bernard Haitink conducting.

Tuesday April 16:  Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Edo de Waart, conductor
BEETHOVEN: Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 55, Eroica
[CSO fill: BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 Pastoral (Bernard Haitink, conductor)]

The question arose recently, "Why are there so many performances of Beethoven's (H)Eroic(a) Symphony these days?

Simple answer?  It is a masterpiece; it ushers in the "Romantic Era" in music history; it was written 210 years ago this year (1803), and we humans love our anniversaries!

The Leonore Overture No. 3 was the composer's 2nd attempt to write an overture to his opera "Fidelio".... here's the peculiar chronology to the three "Leonore" Overtures (courtesy Wikipedia).

    Opus 72: Fidelio Overture (1814)
    Opus 72a: Leonore Overture "No. 2" (1805)
    Opus 72b: Leonore Overture "No. 3" (1806)
    Opus 138: Leonore Overture "No. 1" (1807)

Beethoven was a lover of nature who spent a great deal of his time on walks in the country. He frequently left Vienna to work in rural locales.  The first sketches of the Sixth Symphony, Pastoral appeared in 1802. It was composed simultaneously with his more famous—and more fiery—Fifth Symphony. Both symphonies were premiered in a long and under-rehearsed concert in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, on 22 December 1808.  The composer said that the Sixth Symphony is "more the expression of feeling than painting", a point underlined by the title of the first movement ("Awakening of cheerful feelings..."). (per The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 2001)

Enjoy the concert!

( - Vincent Trauth)

(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)