NOVE SINFONIE
First Show: 22/08/08 - Time: 21.30
Location: Teatro Antico
Special Project Euro Mediterranean Festival 2008
Lorin Maazel conducts THE COMPLETE SYMPHONIES
Symphonic Toscanini
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Symphony 8 & Symphony 7
Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93 is a symphony in four movements composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1812. Beethoven referred to it as "my little one."
The symphony is generally light-hearted, though not lightweight, and in many places is cheerfully loud, with many accented notes. Various passages in the symphony are heard by some listeners to be musical jokes. As with various other Beethoven works such as the Opus 27 piano sonatas, the symphony deviates from Classical tradition in making the last movement the weightiest of the four.
Symphony N° 7 was premiered in Vienna on December 8, 1813 at a charity concert for soldiers wounded in the Battle of Hanau, with Beethoven himself conducting and double featured with the patriotic Wellington's Victory symphony. The orchestra was led by Beethoven's friend, Ignaz Schuppanzigh, and included some of the finest musicians of the day: violinist Louis Spohr[1], Johann Hummel, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Antonio Salieri, Anton Romberg, and the Italian double bass virtuoso, Domenico Dragonetti, who Beethoven himself described as playing "with great fire and expressive power". The piece was very well received, and the allegretto had to be encored.[1] Spohr made particular mention of Beethoven's antics on the rostrum ("as a sforzando occurred, he tore his arms with a great vehemence asunder ... at the entrance of a forte he jumped in the air"), and the concert would inevitably be repeated due to its immense success.
Instrumentation
The symphony is scored for strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in A, E and D, 2 trumpets in D, and timpani.
Form
The Seventh Symphony is in four movements:
I. Poco sostenuto — Vivace
II. Allegretto
III. Presto
IV. Allegro con brio
Performance time lasts approximately 34 minutes.
After a slow introduction (as in the First, Second and Fourth Symphonies) the first movement is in sonata form and is dominated by lively dance-like rhythms.
The second movement, in A minor, is "slow", although the tempo marking is Allegretto ("a little lively"), making it slow only in comparison to the other three movements. This movement was encored at the premiere and has remained popular since. The ostinato (repeated rhythmic figure) of a quarter note, two eighth notes and two quarter notes is heard repeatedly. Based on a style of metered poetry from ancient Greece, it follows the form of the Dactylic hexameter. Used by writers like Homer, Dactylic hexameter is a style which has one long beat followed by two short beats. Replacing two short beats by one long beat is acceptable, leading to the tah-te-te-tah-tah-tah-te-te-tah-tah which is so prevalent throughout the Allegretto.
The third movement is a scherzo and trio. Here, the trio (based on an Austrian pilgrims' hymn[2], yet another example of applying poetry to music) is played twice rather than once. This expansion of the usual A-B-A structure of ternary form into A-B-A-B-A was quite common in other works of Beethoven of this period, such as his Fourth Symphony and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2.
The last movement is in sonata form. Donald Francis Tovey, writing in his Essays in Musical Analysis, commented on this movement's "Bacchic fury".
The work is known for its use of rhythmic devices. It is also tonally subtle, making use of the tensions between the key centres of A, C and F. The second movement is in A minor with episodes in A major, and the scherzo is in F major.
Cast:
