The Classicist
7.30pm, Saturday 21 March
Symphonies No.1, 2, 3

The Romantic

 

Conductor Giordano Bellincampi

Beethoven Symphony No.6 ‘Pastoral’
Beethoven Symphony No.7

 

It’s said that when Beethoven became deaf, the music he missed above all was birdsong. The Pastoral Symphony is a tender, affectionate picture of the countryside he loved so much, from a babbling brook to a violent thunderstorm. But it’s not merely pictorial. In this very personal music, Beethoven pours out his joy at being in nature. 

Joy in the Seventh Symphony is all about rhythm. ‘The apotheosis of the dance’, Wagner said, and he was right. This irresistible music skips and springs and leaps with vigour, yet also with miraculous lightness and grace.