Beethoven I

1. Allegro maestoso
2. Adagio un poco mosso
3. Rondo: Allegro

Intermission

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827): Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 (1799–1800)

1. Adagio molto – Allegro con brio
2. Andante cantabile con moto
3. Menuetto: Allegro molto e vivace
4. Finale: Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace

Mustonen has appeared in major concert halls and festivals around the globe and has also enjoyed a distinguished career as a chamber musician. Recent recital appearances include Chicago’s Symphony Center, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and the Sydney Opera House. In the near future, he will present a series of eight concerts at London’s legendary Wigmore Hall, performing all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. As a composer, he is particularly renowned for his symphonies, concertos, and large-scale chamber music works. His compositions are performed internationally, and he is a frequent guest composer and artist-in-residence at festivals around the world.

Mustonen’s extensive discography includes several award-winning recordings, among them releases recognized with Edison and Gramophone Awards. Until 2023, he served as Artistic Director of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. His many honors include the Hindemith Music Prize, the Finland Prize, and the Pro Finlandia Medal.

Among Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano concertos, a special place belongs to his final one, the Piano Concerto in E-flat major, Op. 73, completed in 1809 and widely known by its nickname, the “Emperor” Concerto. Beethoven’s hearing had deteriorated drastically during the early years of the nineteenth century, leading to a nervous breakdown in 1802. He emerged from this crisis with renewed determination, but his highly lucrative career as a piano virtuoso was soon coming to an end. Instead, he focused increasingly on composing new works that were larger in scale, more ambitious, and more surprising than ever before. The stylistic transformation is clearly evident in his piano concertos as well.

Beethoven’s first three piano concertos were written as part of his effort to establish himself as Vienna’s leading pianist-composer at the turn of the century. He was still able to perform as the soloist in the Fourth Piano Concerto, completed in 1806, but he never performed the Fifth Concerto himself. As a result, he devoted exceptional attention to the work’s details, even writing out the solo cadenzas himself, an unusual practice at the time. These unaccompanied, free-form passages, which traditionally appear near the ends of movements, are in this concerto found not only later in the work but also immediately at the very beginning. Beethoven explicitly forbade pianists from improvising their own cadenzas.

The nickname “Emperor” was apparently coined by Beethoven’s British publisher and is used primarily outside the German-speaking world. Beethoven’s own attitude toward Napoleon, who had conquered much of Europe, was complex. It is worth remembering that during the concerto’s composition in the spring of 1809, Napoleon’s forces were bombarding Vienna, which eventually surrendered in May. Although the concerto contains moments of great lyricism, its overall character is grand, heroic, and majestic, which may explain why the nickname has endured. The Emperor Concerto is dedicated to one of Beethoven’s most important patrons, Archduke Rudolf of Austria, the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II.

original text: Panu Sivonen

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 1

Beethoven’s development as a composer, his emergence as a pioneer of an entirely new musical era and the father of the modern symphony, did not proceed gradually or in a straight line. Rather, it advanced through a series of remarkable leaps. In his youth, Beethoven studied with Joseph Haydn but felt that he did not receive sufficient guidance or encouragement in developing his own compositional voice. Consequently, he continued his studies with figures such as Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri.

The first major step toward artistic maturity came with his Symphony No. 1, which Beethoven is known to have begun sketching while studying with Albrechtsberger in 1794–95. By the end of the century, he had already achieved considerable fame as a brilliant pianist and unrivalled improviser, but this symphony elevated him into the ranks of serious composers.

The work demonstrates a level of maturity only faintly foreshadowed in Beethoven’s earlier compositions. Although the first piano concertos (1795 and 1796) are balanced and skillfully crafted, it is in the symphony that the composer’s distinctive personality and the first signs of his future development emerge with striking clarity.

The individuality of the musical language lies in its power, driven by bold dynamics and harmonies and shaped by sharp contrasts. In its proportions and overall aesthetic, the symphony still resembles the works of Beethoven’s great predecessors, Haydn and Mozart. Yet it also contains something entirely new. For example, the third movement bears the traditional title Menuetto, but Beethoven was already moving away from the elegant, courtly dance style toward a freer, more exuberant expression that would eventually become known as the scherzo. The most significant stylistic breakthrough in Beethoven’s career came a few years later with his Third Symphony, Eroica, a work that laid the foundation for modern symphonic composition.

original text: Matti Lehtonen