Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross (Die Sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze) began as a commission in the 1780s for the Oratorio de la Santa Cueva church in Cádiz, Spain. The composition was to accompany the somber Good Friday mass celebrated in the lower chapel of the church. Haydn’s score comprises an introduction, seven movements, and a cataclysmic conclusion. In the original conception, the interior movements followed sermons on the seven sayings of Jesus on the cross culled from the four Gospels. Haydn originally scored the work for orchestra and subsequently adapted it for string quartet, piano solo, and, finally, orchestra and chorus as an oratorio. Solemnly cast in D minor, the Introduzione emphasizes an agonizing maestoso theme distinguished by enormous leaps and dotted rhythms. Throughout the movement, roughly laid out in sonata form, Haydn uses pauses to significant effect, resulting in contrasts that are as dramatic as they are highly meditative.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his three final symphonies—No. 39 in E-flat Major, No. 40 in G Minor, and No. 41 in C Major (nicknamed “Jupiter”)—in a creative burst during the summer of 1788. This period witnessed various misfortunes in Mozart’s life, among them depression, decline of steady income, and the death of an infant daughter. The exuberance of these late scores, however, belies any sense of tragedy, and they represent the apex of the late–18th-century symphonic form.
The early performance history of the Symphony No. 39 is rife with conjecture. The earliest confirmed performance was in 1792 at a memorial concert for Mozart in Hamburg. Since then, it has become a repertoire fixture worldwide. While it stands in the grander shadows of its sibling symphonies, nos. 40 and 41, No. 39 nevertheless stands apart in its level of accomplishment.
Mozart opens the work with ostentatious grandeur. The Adagio introduction of the first movement abounds with brass fanfares and regal dotted rhythms. The subsequent Allegro follows a sonata-form outline in its development of animated thematic material. Restraint is the defining characteristic of the A-flat–major second movement, Andante con moto, which features the string and woodwind sections. The third movement presents a classic Mozartian minuet, marked Allegretto. Its terpsichorean joviality includes an internal trio section derived from an Austrian Ländler or folk song. The Allegro finale is another sonata-form movement that relies on scalar musical themes skillfully spun out.
The concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven remain testaments to his unique strain of musical virtuosity and imaginative ambition. The piano concertos, filled with fiery dramatics balanced against episodes of sonic tranquility, remain especially formidable for interpreters. These qualities proliferate within the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, composed in 1809 and dedicated to Beethoven’s patron and friend, Archduke Rudolf of Austria. A fixture of the concert stage since its premiere in November 1811, the Fifth Piano Concerto exhibits Beethoven’s continually innovative style of composition in its most demanding and masterly forms. The key of E-flat major has long been associated with the idea of “heroism” in Beethoven’s “middle period” works, famously the “Eroica” Symphony and the String Quartet No. 10, Op. 74. The Piano Concerto No. 5 fits within this group by transforming the soloist and ensemble into a heroically symphonic unity.
The origins of the concerto’s nickname, “Emperor,” have prompted much speculation. The appellation stems not from Beethoven. Indeed, Napoleon Bonaparte was the only emperor on his mind during the work’s composition as the armies of France besieged the city of Vienna. By this point, however, Beethoven had less than polite names for the conqueror. A few years prior, he notably scratched out a dedication to Napoleon from the manuscript of the “Eroica” Symphony after the latter crowned himself emperor of France. The composer’s opinion of Napoleon softened slightly at the end of his life; he infamously remarked on his deathbed that he was “mistaken about that Scheißkerl.”
The concerto’s grandiose introduction erupts with thunderous chords and arpeggiated passagework for the soloist. Violins eventually introduce the primary theme of the Allegro first movement, followed by the other instruments and the piano. The movement is notable as the longest Beethoven wrote for a piano concerto and the first where he explicitly forbade performers from improvising cadenzas. Running only 82 bars in length, the concerto’s middle movement, marked Adagio un poco moto, is possibly Beethoven’s most majestic. The thematic material in B major, introduced by muted strings and reduced woodwinds, takes on a “nocturne” quality supported by the delicate lines of the piano. As with the Fourth Piano Concerto, Beethoven does not leave a pause between the second and third movements. A passionate and boisterous rondo finale closes the concerto.
The Piano Concerto No. 5 was the only one of Beethoven’s piano concertos that did not debut in Vienna and feature himself as the premiere soloist. His growing deafness had curtailed his performing career significantly by this period. As a result, the honors of the premiere went to the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under conductor Johann Philipp Christian Schulz in November 1811, with Friedrich Schneider at the keyboard. Virtuosos like Carl Czerny and Franz Liszt were regular champions in the 19th century, and the score lacks no exponents today.
—Ryan M. Prendergast