André de Ridder conducts the NZSO in the last of three concerts in the Immerse Festival 2023 performed over three consecutive days in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre.
The programme features two of Beethoven’s most dramatic works written around the same time, both in C minor - his trailblazing Fifth Symphony and the Coriolan Overture. In between you’ll hear ‘subito con forza’ by Unsuk Chin which takes inspiration from both these C minor works.
Photo: NZSO
Programme
BEETHOVEN: Coriolan Overture
Unsuk CHIN: subito con forza
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No 5 in C minor Op 67
Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture is not based on Shakespeare’s Coriolanus – but on a play written nearly 200 years later by Heinrich von Collin. The work bristles with intensity from its outset. Coriolanus is a proud and defiant General who marches, with the enemy Volscians, on his own city of Rome. The siege is averted only by womanly persuasion but Coriolanus’s heeding of his mother’s pleas costs him his life.
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/ André de Ridder
Now a piece that pays tribute to Beethoven by the Korean composer Unsuk Chin.
Unsuk Chin says, what appeals most to her are Beethoven’s “enormous contrasts: from volcanic eruptions to extreme sensitivity.” ‘subito con forza’, meaning “suddenly, with force/power” was written to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.
It starts exactly like Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, with its aggressive C minor chords. But these chords immediately splinter apart, like a protest from the percussion.
However this rollercoaster of a work ends tenderly, capturing the extremes of violence and serenity Chin loves so much. And finally, we land on a dense mattress of lush sound, which resolves into a chord of Beethovenian C minor.
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/ André de Ridder
The opening 4 notes (short, short, short, long) form one of the most recognisable moments in all classical music. The rhythmic and melodic starkness of this motif is as startling now as it was more than 200 years ago.
This work shook up the course of symphonic writing. Beethoven’s 5th is one of the earliest symphonies to feature trombones in the brass section, and the first to re-introduce a theme (that iconic opening motif) from one movement to the next with great unifying force, but it also charted a course into deeper emotional waters.
The work jumps surprisingly from moments of darkness to moments of light, and the narrative arc is a heroic journey from struggle in C minor to a triumphant C major ending – a journey that is atypical of earlier symphonies.
“Many assert that every minor piece must end in the minor,” Beethoven wrote of his own symphony. “On the contrary, I find that … the major has a glorious effect. Joy follows sorrow, sunshine—rain.”
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/ André de Ridder
Producer & Sound Engineer: Darryl Stack
Recorded 30 July 2023 at the Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert
