24 Oct 2020

BEETHOVEN arr Weingartner: Grosse Fuge in B flat Op 133

From Music Alive, 7:30 pm on 24 October 2020

Maestro Hamish McKeich has rightly described 'Grosse Fuge' as a masterpiece.

Bust of Beethoven

Bust of Beethoven Photo: Hugo Hagen, Public Domain

Initially written for string quartet and completed just two years before Beethoven’s death, its complexities bewildered critics at the time. Today’s audiences are far more accepting. Beethoven’s ambitions with the work – and the superb orchestration the NZSO performs by renowned Austrian conductor Felix Weingartner – means this ‘Great Fugue’ sounds like a forerunner of what orchestral music would more deeply explore in the 20th century.

In other words, even near the end of his life, Beethoven was still an innovator.

His late works show a kind of deeply radical freedom. In 'Missa Solemnis', the six bagatelles for piano, and his last six string quartets – Beethoven seems to abandon the need to explain himself, to be ‘accessible,’ to be populist. He is clearly trying to do something completely different. Just what he was trying to do, however, is still up for debate. Originally written as the last movement of the String Quartet No 13 before friends tactfully suggested it might be a bit much and should be excised and published as a separate work, the 'Grosse Fuge' was universally hated by critics of the time.

And yet the 'Grosse Fuge' has slowly but surely gained favour over time. In the 1920s string quartets began including the work in their repertoire and orchestral arrangements began to proliferate – including this arrangement, orchestrated by Felix Weingartner. It can only be assumed that as time passed and music advanced, the rest of the world came closer and closer to understanding Beethoven’s strange and wild opus. (Notes: NZSO)

Recorded 24 October 2020, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert

Producer: David McCaw

Engineer: Darryl Stack

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