Listening to the start of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy is a little bit like joining a piece halfway through! Opening with a long piano solo, in the style of a cadenza, there follows a series of variations for piano and orchestra on a theme that has strong similarities to the one Beethoven was later to use to great effect some 16 years later in the finale of his Ninth Symphony. The unusual shape of the Fantasy is partially explained by the fact that Beethoven wrote it to be the final work in a benefit concert he had organised in 1808, and he wanted to include all the participants in it – he was the pianist and apparently improvised the opening at this performance. Like the Ninth Symphony, it ends joyously- in this case proclaiming that when ‘Love and Strength come uniting, all men rise through divine grace’.

The first movement of the famous Moonlight Sonata (not Beethoven’s title) is marked Quasi una fantasia (almost a fantasy) perhaps implying that the playing style should be almost improvisational. Given that the Choral Fantasy opens with a passage that started life as an improvisation, it seemed appropriate to connect these two pieces in our programme.

Beethoven’s overture Coriolan, which opens our concert is – unexpectedly perhaps – not inspired directly by the Shakespeare tragedy, but by a play based on it (Coriolan) by Heinrich von Collin. Beethoven was asked to write an overture to precede a performance of this at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz, probably because the Prince was one of Beethoven’s patrons. Unlike Beethoven’s overture, the play appears to have more or less disappeared after this performance!  

Haydn’s Symphony no.99 in Eb was written in Vienna in 1793 in preparation for his second visit to London. It was at this time that Beethoven moved from Bonn to Vienna with the intention of studying with Haydn. Whilst he did secure this, the relationship was far from smooth, though Haydn did take Beethoven with him to the Esterházy palace to be introduced to Prince Nikolaus II. There is no doubt though, that Haydn’s rather cellular composition approach had a direct influence on Beethoven’s work. 

Haydn’s trips to London had an important impact upon his style. Whilst working at the palace at Esterházy, his audience was largely aristocratic and detached from the most recent trends, whereas London’s busy musical scene offered him the chance to engage much more directly with his audience and write with an eye to their particular tastes. In modern terms, the audience was middle to upper-middle class, and Haydn took their responses to his work seriously. No.99 was the first of Haydn’s symphonies to incorporate clarinets, but whether this can be put down to Mozart’s influence (as is sometimes claimed) is harder to tell- it's very unlikely that by 1793 he had heard either the G minor symphony or The Magic Flute, but by the time of the Creation (1797-98) the influence of the clarinet writing in these is very evident. 

Stephen Pratt

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