Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 1 in C major, Op 21 (1800)
Adagio molto - Allegro con brio
Andante cantabile con moto
Menuetto: Allegro molto, e vivace
Adagio - Allegro molto e vivace
Mendelssohn was just sixteen when he composed his sensational String Octet and Mozart nineteen when he transcended boyhood felicity in his G major Violin Concerto, K216, suddenly producing one of his first real masterpieces. Beethoven, however, waited until he was almost thirty before unveiling his First Symphony, which holds a similar position in his output. It was a work that changed the face of music. Eight years earlier, his benefactor Count Waldstein had persuaded him to leave his native Bonn and settle in Vienna, where he would "receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn". The phrase was nicely turned, even if what Beethoven received from Haydn's hands was no more than a bit of tuition which seemed not to have greatly pleased either of them.
On the other hand, what he received from the city where Haydn still lived and Mozart had recently died was inspirational encouragement of a sort which, within a few years, set him on course to produce the greatest, most vanguard symphonies of his time.
Though much of his Symphony No 1 was clearly modelled on Haydn and Mozart, the unmistakable sounds of Beethoven’s audacity and originality were apparent in the very opening bars, whose disorientating modulations (provocatively side-stepping the symphony’s home key of C major) must have perplexed the audience who attended its Viennese premiere, conducted by the composer in a vast benefit concert in April 1800. Since this was Beethoven’s first public concert in his adopted city, the shock waves were surely all the greater. C major, for Beethoven, was never the simple key it was traditionally thought to be, and as his C major piano concerto of the same period similarly underlined. Both works supply that mixture of robust energy and romantic tenderness, of serenity and explosiveness that were to be the hallmark of all his later music.
So if, as Edinburgh's distinguished musical essayist Sir Donald Tovey suggested, the First Symphony represents "Beethoven’s fitting farewell to the eighteenth century," it is by no means merely retrospective. Though he composed it for the same classical-sized orchestra for which Haydn scored his last symphonies, its novelty value and wealth of ideas - evenly spread through each of the four movements - were immediately recognised.
Thus the first movement’s off-key opening leads to a startlingly punchy allegro, filled with sudden key changes and detached, hammered rhythms. The blend of woodwind and string tone in the andante may sound Mozartian, but the persistent soft tapping of the kettledrums - a sensational effect in 1800 - could only be Beethoven. The taut, urgently syncopated minuet is already a Beethoven scherzo in all but name, with a witty interplay of wind chords and string scales in the concentrated trio section. After this model of brevity, the rondo finale echoes the opening movement with a slow introduction, each phrase groping its way teasingly towards the succeeding allegro, and showing how Beethoven could bring his own sense of humour to a trick of a kind Haydn enjoyed. Scales, so often a feature of this work, play a last special part in the coda to this movement.
© Conrad Wilson
