Beethoven Festival I – Beethoven and Neuwirth

Beethoven’s First Symphony was premiered on 2 April 1800 at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The composer was 29 years old and already well known for his music, shaped by an unyielding will and strong personal integrity. At the same time, he pays tribute to his teacher Haydn: the symphony opens with a slow introduction that elegantly leads into the fast main section – a form Haydn had used in many of his works. The symphony is idyllic, at times almost pastoral, yet also dramatically powerful, with swirling strings and grand, resonant wind writing.

Olga Neuwirth’s music draws on impulses from Stravinsky, Monteverdi, jazz and popular music. She is also strongly influenced by visual art, literature and film. In the rhapsody Zones of Blue (2024), co-commissioned by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, she takes inspiration from a poem by Tennessee Williams. The work is a musical meditation on fatigue, memory and those moments when words are no longer enough. It was written for Jörg Widmann.

The threads extend back to Gustav Mahler in Masaot/Clocks without Hands, commissioned by the Vienna Philharmonic to mark the centenary of Mahler’s death. Here, Neuwirth’s music becomes a poetic reflection on time and the way memories fade and are reshaped. From the rich orchestral texture, exuberant Balkan-inspired music emerges – though with a distinctive and slightly distorted character.

In this concert, part of the Beethoven Festival, we hear the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Chief Conductor Ryan Bancroft.

Read more about chief conductor Ryan Bancroft