Programme Guide

Beethoven described his Sixth Symphony as “more an expression of feeling than painting” even though the Pastoral Symphony dates from before the time of a dogged distinction between absolute and programme music. Even more astonishing than Beethoven’s labelling this a musical day in the country is its genesis: he composed the Pastoral contemporaneously with his Fifth Symphony and presented both for the first time on 22 December 1808 – what a programme! – along with the Fourth Piano Concerto, parts of the C major Mass, and the Choral Fantasy.

Has any composer more forcefully demonstrated the breadth of his musical invention? To Beethoven it came naturally: he often worked simultaneously on two works in the same genre in order to exhaust its expressive potential. And so the Pastoral forms a counterpart to the Fifth: in major instead of minor, in five rather than four movements, inspired by a programme as opposed to absolute music.

The last-mentioned contrast is also exhibited in the first part of this concert: the Double Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Chamber Orchestra by Witold Lutosławski strikes one as absolute music when heard alongside Henri Dutilleux’s Violin Concerto, the title of which – L’Arbre des songes – is ripe for programmatic interpretation. Marie-Pierre Langlamet (harp) and Jonathan Kelly (oboe), both members of the Berliner Philharmoniker, are the soloists in the Lutosławski Double Concerto; the solo part in L’Arbre des songes (The Tree of Dreams) is taken by Artist in Residence Leonidas Kavakos.