Beethoven

Beethoven’s Mass in C Major: Gentleness, Cheerfulness, and Humanity

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Completed in 1807, Beethoven’s Mass in C Major came seventeen years before the premiere of the monumental Missa solemnis. In its way, it is a work which is equally mould-shattering. Beethoven, who seldom attended church, considered music to be “the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life…the one spiritual entrance into the higher world.” His Mass in C Major moves away from dogma to embrace the free, all-encompassing sanctity of the individual. A serene, …

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Remembering Menahem Pressler

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Menahem Pressler, the pianist and founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, passed away on May 6. He was 99. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, the 14-year-old Pressler hid from Nazi thugs who vandalized the shop owned by his Jewish parents during the Kristallnacht. In 1939, the family fled and emigrated, first to Israel and then to the United States. In 1946, Pressler won first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San …

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Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto: An Exuberant and Daring Conception

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Beethoven was a newcomer to Vienna when, in 1795, he completed the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major. It is bold music which was designed to showcase the young composer’s skills as one of the preeminent virtuoso pianists of the time. Although the C major Concerto was the first to be published (in 1801), its composition was preceded by the piece we now know as Piano Concerto No. 2. While the Second Concerto …

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Beethoven’s “The Creatures of Prometheus” Overture: Music for a Ballet

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In 1800, around the time of the premiere of his First Symphony, the 29-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven received a commission to write music for a ballet based on the Prometheus myth. Beethoven’s collaborator and librettist was the the Italian choreographer and dancer, Salvatore Viganò. Although Viganò usually composed the music for his ballets himself, this occasion was far too important. The Creatures of Prometheus, a “heroic and allegorical ballet” in two acts, would be …

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Beethoven’s String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3: The Apex of a Genre

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In November of 1792, the young Ludwig van Beethoven left Bonn, the provincial city of his birth, to resettle in glittering, cosmopolitan Vienna. Two years after this momentous move, Beethoven completed the String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3. The piece marked the 24-year-old composer’s first foray into the genre. A successor to the Baroque trio sonata, the string trio (violin, viola, cello) was a popular form in the eighteenth century, when …

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Beethoven’s “Triple Concerto”: Chamber Music on a Grand Scale

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Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C Major, Op. 56 is a rare musical hybrid. Commonly known as the Triple Concerto, it playfully and exuberantly combines elements of the piano trio with the concerto. With this music, Beethoven achieved a genre-bending feat which was virtually unprecedented at the time, and has not been attempted by any significant composer since. While the sinfonia concertante features a dialogue between individual solo instruments and the …

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Remembering Lars Vogt

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Lars Vogt, the renowned German pianist and conductor, passed away on Monday, September 5. He was 51. In March of 2021, Vogt was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in his throat and liver. Born in the town of Düren in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, Vogt rose to prominence after winning second prize at the 1990 Leeds International Piano Competition. He went on to perform as a soloist with the world’s greatest orchestras. He …

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