Jakub Hrůša / Beatrice Rana

»Beethoven’s music activates the mechanisms of fright, dread, anguish and pain, and awakens that very infinite longing which is the very essence of Romanticism.« Thus wrote E.T.A. Hoffmann in 1810, while living in Bamberg. Under the baton of our Chief Conductor, we perform delightful pieces by composers for whom Beethoven had paved the way: Carl Maria von Weber, who was a younger contemporary but died in 1826, a year before Beethoven, was motivated by him to explore the emotional world of the new era – as heard in the imaginative overture to his opera »Euryanthe«. Tchaikovsky composed his famous Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1874/75. It is a captivating work with catchy folk song melodies, about which his confidante Nadezhda von Meck had already remarked enthusiastically: »Oh, one does not forget this music as long as one’s heart beats.« Schumann was also masterful at capturing the richness of Romantic sentiment: in his Third Symphony, written in 1850, he captured »Rhenish life« – as one premiere critic put it – including a solemn ceremony in the stirring fourth movement. On our tour, however, it will be Beethoven himself who takes the floor with a piece instead of Schumann: His Second Symphony is a testament to his early creative power, which, like the other compositions from his pen, set much in motion in the history of music – as the critic Friedrich Rochlitz remarked as early as 1803 after the first performance: »This work by a ’fire spirit’ will still be around when a thousand fashions celebrated today have long gone to the grave.«