Gustavo Dudamel conducts Tchaikovsky’s Fifth
Beethoven’s dramatic and heroic Egmont Overture is a famous concert piece. By contrast, hardly anyone knows the incidental music to Goethe’s drama of the same name that it prefaces. Gustavo Dudamel presents it and shows how vividly Beethoven depicts the fate of the protagonist: his triumphs, his love, his failure. Fate also plays a central role in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony – symbolised by a relentless motif that runs through the work.
As an instrumental composer, Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the most brilliant musical dramatists of all time. However, as he only completed one work for the operatic stage, Fidelio, it is all the more fascinating to hear the music that the composer wrote for Goethe’s tragedy Egmont. With his incidental music – marches, melodramas, entr’actes, two songs for soprano and a final Symphony of Victory – Beethoven provided a colourful and varied addition to the tragedy. Set in the 16th century, the story tells of the Dutch struggle for freedom against their Spanish rulers. The eponymous hero Egmont vacillates between his loyalty to the Habsburg governor and his sympathy for his compatriots’ desire for independence.
The concert features the renowned soprano Christina Landshamer and Felix Kammerer as narrator. The actor, who has won several awards including the German Film Award, is the son of singer Angelika Kirchschlager and grew up in a musical family.
In the 1880s, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s fame spread throughout Europe. He appeared more and more often conducting his own works, including with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1888 and 1889. Had the composer, who suffered from self-doubt, creative crises and also feelings of guilt because of his homosexuality, freed himself from his inner demons? The Fifth Symphony, written during this period, provides an ambivalent answer if it is to be interpreted as autobiographical testimony. The work begins in a sombre mood with the fate theme, which also appears in the following movements and is finally heard in a major key in the finale. The composition impresses with its captivating dramaturgy and beguiling beauty. The melody introduced by the solo horn in the slow movement is one of the most popular themes in symphonic music.
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