Tomorrow, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra begins its participation in L’Auditori’s Beethoven250 Festival. A collaboration that offers audiences five programmes in which 16 of Beethoven’s works will be performed, including symphonies, concertos, vocal pieces and overtures, as well as premieres inspired by this iconic figure and his musical production.
This Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in the first of the programmes, we will enjoy a performance by Jan Willem de Vriend, the OBC’s guest principal conductor, a great expert on Beethoven’s work. The programme is a reproduction of that performed by Beethoven at Vienna’s Imperial Palace in a concert on 27 February 1814, where Symphony No.8 in F Major, Op. 93 was heard for the first time.
The Viennese evening, staged for our listening pleasure in Sala 1 Pau Casals, was completed with three works that the German composer already had in his portfolio: Symphony No.7, the trio for soprano, tenor, and baritone Tremate, empi, tremate and the triumphant Wellington’s Victory.
A fundamental pillar of Western culture, the importance of Beethoven’s symphonic corpus cannot be underestimated. Regarding the other two works, the concert trio Tremate, empi, tremate is a youth piece written when Beethoven was a student of Salieri, and will feature three renowned singers: soprano Mercedes Gancedo, tenor Marc Sala and baritone Riccardo Certi.
The concert will conclude with Wellington’s Victory which, although Beethoven considered it a minor work, is impressive because of its 193 cannon shots. Beethoven wrote the piece to commemorate the Duke of Wellington’s victory over the Napoleonic armies in the Basque city of Vitoria.
Download the concert programme.
The OBC at the Beethoven250 Festival
As part of the Beethoven250 Festival, the OBC will perform a large part of Beethoven’s symphonic works under the batons of Kazushi Ono, Jan Willem de Vriend and Rudolf Buchbinder. These will include his symphonies, the Concerto for Violin and Piano, the Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano, and the complete piano and violin concertos.
The Festival will also include other projects related to Beethoven’s work, such as the opera Prisoner of the State by David Lang, which is based on the original libretto of Fidelio —co-commissioned by notable institutions such as the New York Philharmonic—. The OBC will also be premiering a work by Hèctor Parra, based on texts from Beethoven’s conversation notebooks.
Full programme for the Beethoven250 Festival.
L’OBC se suma al Festival Beethoven250 amb el primer dels cinc programes que dedicarà al geni de Bonn
23-Jan-2020 – Aleix Palau