Guest in Linz

For Beethoven, stagnation was agonising, and so he consistently pursued his own compositional course, leaving his predecessors far behind – yet at the same time paving the way for future generations. He wrote his fifth and last piano concerto in 1809 during a turbulent period, as he was troubled by the occupation of Vienna by Napoleon. Nonetheless, the piece feels like an optimistic musical struggle for freedom. His Second Symphony, completed in 1802, also bursts with self-confidence and vitality: there is hardly any trace to be found of his despair that year over his advancing deafness, or of the harrowing »Heiligenstadt Testament« he penned. In Linz, instead of this symphony, we perform a work by Schumann, whose personal music library was filled with Beethoven’s works: his famous »Rhenish« was composed in Düsseldorf in 1850 – and is so dynamic that an early reviewer raved of »boat trips between green grapevine-covered hills and harvest festivals« But Schumann's music captures not only the majestic Rhine, but also the mighty Cologne Cathedral – and perhaps his admired role model even echoes through the notes; after all, he had already been a strong advocate some time earlier for the Beethoven monument in Bonn, eventually erected in 1845: He proposed depicting him as larger than life, »so that, just as he did in life, he might look out over hill and dale – and when the Rhine boats sail past and the strangers ask what the giant means, every child could answer: ‘That’s Beethoven!’«