This program, focused on early Beethoven, opens with excerpts from a work that was highly regarded by the composer and his audience but has been neglected ever since. The Creatures of Prometheus, an 1801 ballet depicting Prometheus as creator of the human race, received some 29 performances during the first two years of its run and was repeatedly mined by Beethoven in his later music, yet today only the overture is heard with any frequency.
This is a pity, for The Creatures of Prometheus—with its transparent scoring and effortless tunefulness—is one of the most charming scores from Beethoven’s early period as well as one that looks forward to later, more familiar works to 20th- and 21st-century audiences. (It was theater music such as Prometheus and Fidelio that sustained Beethoven’s popularity in the early 19th century, not the mature symphonies and string quartets, which were often regarded as too eccentric and avant-garde.)
The excerpts chosen for this performance include an exuberant sonata-form overture, a mysterious introduction that features a storm sequence (“la Tempesta”) that anticipates the celebrated thunder in the “Pastoral” Symphony, a joyfully chugging Act I, and—performed as the final selection on this program—a rousing variation set. This rare ballet demonstrates that even if Beethoven had not gone on to be a revolutionary innovator, he would still have been a formidable exponent of Classical style.
Beethoven concludes his The Creatures of Prometheus ballet with a variation set based on a tune he obviously loved, using it in his Contredanses, the finale of the “Eroica” Symphony, and the “Eroica Variations” for piano. In a droll reversal of normal variation procedures, the “Eroica” works present fragments of the tune before introducing the tune itself, but in this early ballet version, the tune is played straight up at the beginning instead of being subjected to teasing previews. The majestic coda, with its elegant woodwind chords and ecstatic timpani, brings down the curtain on Beethoven’s early period.
Beethoven’s Ah! perfido for soprano and orchestra dates from 1796 and is another early masterpiece considered to be one of the composer’s more popular 18th-century works. Based on a setting of verses by Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (better known by his pseudonym Pietro Metastasio), it displays a Mozartian balance and melodic shape, but also an intensity and a punishing vocal line that forecasts Beethoven’s later work. A depiction of a young woman betrayed by her lover (based on the relationship between Deidamia and Achilles) Ah! perfido begins chaotically with an anguished recitative. Gentle strings then introduce the slow-tempo aria, caressed by elegant woodwinds and punctuated with delicate pizzicato. Despite its 18th-century style, it is full of quirky surprise and turbulent mood swings.
The first symphonies of great composers are fascinating, both for what they do and do not foretell. Schubert and Sibelius, for example, made their symphonic debuts with works that sound distinctly “early,” though with revealing glimpses of the men to come. On the other hand, the first symphonies of Brahms and Mahler are already thoroughly characteristic of the composers’ sound worlds. In a few cases, such as those of Wagner and Stravinsky, the first symphonies offer almost no clues of innovations to come.
With Beethoven, the matter is tricky. Seen today as a bridge figure who brought 18th-century music to a dramatic climax even as he ushered in that of the 19th, his First Symphony—which premiered, appropriately, in 1800—is like a transition to a transition, with bright echoes of Haydn and Mozart, as well as teasing glimmers of the new energy and sweep that Beethoven was soon to bring to music in the “Eroica” Symphony. He was clearly struggling to come out of the shadows of Haydn (with whom he had studied) and Mozart, just as Brahms would later struggle to emerge from Beethoven’s own symphonic legacy.
The famous opening of the Symphony No. 1, with its odd pizzicato chords that lead the listener into ambiguous tonal territories, is the perfect overture to Beethoven’s symphonies. In a limited sense, it even foreshadows the opening to Beethoven’s final symphony, except that here the opening is more a tease than a mystery; it is a final cadence rather than an opening phrase, an avant-garde version of a Haydn musical joke.
Certainly, the ensuing music—a vigorous and joyful Allegro con brio, a lyrical Andante cantabile with fugato sections, an emphatic Menuetto, and a lively Finale—are thoroughly steeped in 18th-century style and spirit. The wind trio in the Menuetto, with its delicate string accompaniment, is as elegant as similar moments in Mozart, just as the sonata structure in the first movement is as firm as that of any Classical symphony.
Still, the elemental energy that is perhaps Beethoven’s most striking characteristic sweeps through even this early symphony, despite Berlioz’s statement that the First is “not Beethoven,” but merely a work that “imitates with ingenuity”—a remark that has set the tone for criticism of this symphony ever since. The earthiness of the Menuetto, to cite the most noticeable innovation, is barely shy of a Beethoven scherzo, just as the suspense, tension, comic turns, and sudden pauses in the finale have Beethoven’s rhythmic imprint.
At the very least, this symphony, which Beethoven himself premiered from the podium, irritated pedants and traditionalists: “Too much woodwind writing,” wrote one. “Such liberties and peculiarities are not suitable for the opening of a grand concert in a spacious opera house,” wrote another. For that alone, the symphony deserves to stand at the beginning of Beethoven’s symphonic revolution.
This concert features arias and a rarely heard overture from Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, a story of political injustice set in a prison and originally entitled Leonore. Beethoven was notorious for laboring over and revising material, sometimes for years, but the Leonore saga set a record, even for him: four overtures for one opera, the final one bearing a completely different title than the others. Beethoven’s opera was produced on three occasions during his lifetime—in 1805, 1806, and 1814, each performance opening with a different overture based on Beethoven’s dissatisfaction with the preceding one.
The 1805 Vienna premiere was a notorious flop, a debacle often attributed to the occupation of the city by the French. Deeply depressed, Beethoven nevertheless struggled to resurrect the work the next year with the help of aristocratic admirers who had, by then, returned to the city. In a series of tense, day-long sessions, Beethoven was persuaded to cut the opera to two acts. Even so, the new production was a huge failure: The libretto was denounced by the press as “a worthless piece of hackwork”; the music was castigated as “disorganized, harsh, complicated, and ear splitting.”
But Beethoven loved Leonore and refused to give up. In 1814, he attempted yet another series of revisions, including cuts, restorations, and completely new music, with many of the most famous touches coming at the last minute, including the culminating glorification of humanity at the end that is so often compared with the finale of his Ninth Symphony. This final version packed a huge wallop, finally earning the recognition Beethoven had sought for more than 10 years. In Evenings with the Orchestra, Berlioz describes a typical reaction to the work: “Not a word is spoken in the orchestra. The eyes of all true artists are aglow, those of ordinary musicians remain open, those of the blockheads are shut from time to time. Afterwards, one Fidelio-lover says to another, ‘That music sets your insides on fire. I feel as if I’d swallowed 15 glasses of brandy.’”
Indeed, Fidelio was responsible to a significant extent for the great esteem Beethoven enjoyed during the final years of his life, when a large part of the public still found his instrumental works too “modern” and abstract. Normally, it is the final version of the opera that we hear. The first 20th-century maestro to champion the Fidelio prototype was Richard Strauss in 1905; Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who believes the earlier Leonore is more radical and spellbinding, prefers the early cut as well.
The most famous version of the overture, the Leonore Overture No. 3, is more a symphonic poem than an overture and is frequently performed alone. The Leonore Overture No. 1, written in 1807 for a production in Prague that never took place (so say current scholars), was uncovered after Beethoven’s death and was initially thought to be his first effort. Now it is believed that he wrote it later—his third attempt at an overture—having felt that the more overtly dramatic versions stole the show and gave away too much of the opera. While commentators continue to squabble over the relative merits of the other three, the Leonore Overture No. 1 goes relatively unperformed and unexamined. Author and critic Romain Rolland (when the chronology was assumed to be different than is believed today) dismissed it as “an uncertain essay that failed to satisfy Beethoven, but led him to the splendid discoveries of the two later overtures.”
The Leonore Overture No. 1 was played in 1836 in a performance conducted by Felix Mendelssohn, and it had an early admirer in Fanny, Felix’s sister, who wryly commented that Beethoven “must have lacked taste” if he was unhappy with it, as it was “a finely felt work, interesting, charming, as are few other things that I know.” Indeed, from the first unison chord—which, unlike in the other two versions, is not spiked with timpani—the Overture No. 1 is lighter and more understated. Instead of the supercharged take-off into the Allegro section, this version delivers a more discreet, typically Classical fast section, with different thematic material: The famous lyrical theme, which is worked with suspense into the build-up of the other overtures, is here allowed to sing expansively, the second time with horn sonorities over shimmering strings. This is not a rough draft of the other Leonore overtures, but a different work altogether, more refined and self-contained, with fewer spoilers.
The two Leonore arias on this program combine passionate lyricism with Beethoven’s typically treacherous vocal demands. “Ach, brich noch nicht, du mattes Herz!” (“Ah, break not yet, you wearing heart!”) represents Beethoven at his most lyrical, rising in dramatic intensity and difficulty. The terror in the text is matched by the fearsomeness of the challenges for the singer. The horns get a workout as well, chirping, barking, whispering, rarely ceasing. In “Komm, Hoffnung, lass den letzten Stern” a song of hope during dark anguish, the horns again have a great deal to say, increasing in speed and excitement with the soloist. The soprano must negotiate leaping angular lines, a feature of Beethoven’s vocal writing long before the Ninth Symphony and Missa solemnis.
—Jack Sullivan
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