Repertoire
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 6 in F major, op. 68 “Pastoral”; Symphony No. 7 in A major, op. 92
Artists
Le Concert des Nations
Anita Mitterer, concertmaster
Luca Guglielmi, assistant conductor
Manfredo Kraemer, assistant concertmaster
Beethoven Academy 250
Jordi Savall, conductor
Program
This is the second concert of the season in which Jordi Savall will offer the complete series of Beethoven’s symphonies to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.This is the second concert of the season with Jordi Savall and Beethoven. Continuing with the complete series of Beethoven’s symphonies to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the German composer’s birth, Le Concert des Nations, under the baton of Maestro Savall, performs another two Beethoven symphonies. On this occasion we have the Sixth (also known as the Pastoral Symphony) and the Seventh (which Wagner called the “apotheosis of the dance”). In fact, Beethoven entitled the Pastoral Symphony “Memories of Country Life” at its premiere. The work abandons the traditional form of the classical symphony and includes an extramusical programme that presents a landscape which, in the words of Berlioz, “could have been designed by Poussin and drawn by Michelangelo.”
In the Seventh Symphony, written a few years later, many people also wanted to find some meaning beyond the music itself: Schumann imagined a wedding, while one critic thought that Beethoven might have had too much to drink when he wrote it. The writer Romain Rolland replied that Beethoven was certainly drunk, but “on poetry and genius”.