Beethoven Festival VI – Beethoven and Mayer

In the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven depicts life in the countryside at the beginning of the 19th century – music that steps into the world of Romanticism. Emilie Mayer, born in 1812, was deeply influenced by Beethoven’s music, something we can hear in her Faust Overture.

In the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven himself – unusually – gave the movements descriptive titles: “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the countryside”, “By the brook”, “Merry gathering of country folk”, “Thunderstorm and storm”, and “Shepherd’s song”. Beethoven is often described as serious, stern and even somewhat irascible, but here he takes us on a relaxed and luminous journey through the countryside, disturbed only by a sudden storm.

The concert opens with Christina Nilsson in Beethoven’s concert aria Ah! perfido – a dramatic, even desperate scena for soprano and orchestra, portraying the intense emotions of an abandoned woman: anger, pain and despair.

In this concert, part of the Beethoven Festival, we hear the Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra under the direction of its Music Director, Alan Gilbert.