Video streamed event and on demand: Beethoven Ascending

Violent in character, the Coriolan Overture moves at an unrelenting tempo with abrupt breaks and many dramatic contrasts. Was Beethoven expressing his horror about the reign of terror that had followed the French Revolution just a few years earlier? However it is interpreted, it is a masterpiece of musical invention – highly original and ground-breaking. Although Beethoven was only nineteen years old when he was commissioned to write a cantata to mark the death of Josef II in 1790, the work shows the embryonic marks of his greatness: the choral exhortations and intensity of expression show a knowledge of opera and dramatic oratorio. Whilst the music preserves the sense of a requiem, the cantata is notable for its unusual tone painting, dramatic writing for the orchestra, and significant solo writing for bass and soprano. Although his earlier works had shown flashes of what was to come, the Third Symphony, by contrast, opens with two staggering chords that announce to the world the arrival of a new talent, a forceful personality, a man never to be forgotten. From that point on Beethoven was no mere composer, he was a creator of monuments.

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