Half ways in the series with Beethoven’s complete works for orchestra on CD, Dausgaard and his ardent Swedes are invited on quite an exquisite tour including Ravina, Mostly Mozart NY and BBC Proms this August. Vol. 6 in the series is ready now, with the Pastoral symphony and the three Leonore overtures.
Symphony no. 6 and the three Leonore overtures
The ‘Pastoral’ is a result of Beethoven’s affection for nature. As such it is a part of a long tradition going back to the renaissance where the composer seeks to represent nature and his experience of it in his music. It is well know that Beethoven wrote four different overtures for his one opera, all written over a short period of time as the libretto and the opera as a whole changed and found it’s final shape. The first three are known as the Leonore overtures, the final we know as the Fidelio overture. When Felix Mendelssohn performed all four overtures together in a concert in Leipzig in 1840, his friend and colleague Robert Schumann was impressed. His comments on the revision of Leonore No.2 as Leonore No.3 are particularly interesting: ‘Here the artist can be distinctly overheard in his workshop. How he changed, how he discarded, ideas and instrumentation, how in neither can he free himself from the Florestan aria, how the first three bars of this aria are drawn through the entire composition, how he cannot give up the trumpet signal behind the scene, introduces it even more beautifully in the third overture than in the second, how he does not rest so that his work may reach the perfection we admire in the third. To observe and compare this belongs to the most interesting and the most educative experiences in which disciples of the art can indulge and use to their advantage.’
Exclusive tour with Beethoven in the suitcase
Thomas Dausgard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra Örebro get about with their Beethoven project. Last year they did a hugely successful tour of Germany together with Boris Berezovsky, and late this summer they go from Ravina festival in Chicago (17.08), to Mostly Mozart in New York (19.08), closing with a concert at the BBC Proms in London (23.08).
