Coriolan Overture
Beethoven composed the Coriolan Overture early in 1807. The title seems to refer to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, but the impetus for the overture was a play by Matthäus von Collin, a friend of Beethoven’s, who admired the ideals of classical virtue embodied in the somewhat hackneyed tragedy. On April 24, the Imperial Theater mounted a single performance of Collin's drama, using Beethoven's overture, so as to unite the play with the music that it inspired.

The music did not save the play, which has never been performed since, but the overture is one of Beethoven’s most admired short orchestral works. The Roman general Coriolanus, trapped between the demands of his personal and public life, yields (at his mother’s urging) to a tenderness that will destroy him. The tension of Beethoven's favorite dramatic key, C Minor, is heightened by orchestral chords punctuating the weakest beat of the measure in the Allegro theme. The more lyric second theme represents Coriolanus' mother, Volumnia. When the opening theme returns in the home key, it is transformed rhythmically into a series of lamenting fragments. The whole overture ends with a wonderfully dramatic use of silence—a musical suggestion of tragedy far more potent than that accomplished by the prolix rhetoric of Collin's verse.

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor
Despite the opus number of 37, this concerto was composed about 1799-1800, about the time of the Op. 18 string quartets, the Septet, Op. 20, and the First Symphony, Op. 21. Though an early work, the Third Piano Concerto shows a significant advance over its predecessors.  When the premiere took place four years later, critical response to the concerto at its first performance ranged from lukewarm to cold. In a pattern familiar throughout Beethoven’s life, a work that was spurned at its premiere quickly established itself in the public favor. When Beethoven’s pupil Ries played the second performance, the prestigious Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitschrift declared it to be “indisputably one of Beethoven’s most beautiful compositions.”

Beethoven here pays specific homage to Mozart’s C Minor Concerto, K. 491. That work contains a magical moment at the very end of the first movement which Beethoven seems to echo intentionally. Beethoven’s first movement begins with a lengthy orchestral statement that lays out all of the thematic material at once, beginning with a marchlike theme pregnant with possibilities that closes the first phrase with a rhythmic “knocking” motive clearly invented with the timpani in mind (although Beethoven does not explicitly reveal that fact yet).

Throughout the first movement this knocking motive grows in significance. It completely dominates the development section, which twines other thematic ideas over the recurring staccato commentary of the rhythm. The recapitulation does not emphasize the knocking beyond what is minimally necessary for the restatement. Even the cadenza, which Beethoven composed some years after the rest of the concerto, is based on all the important thematic ideas except the knocking rhythm. The reason appears as the cadenza ends: Beethoven (following Mozart’s example) allows the piano to play through to the end of the movement, rather than simply stopping with the chord that marks the reentry of the orchestra, as happens in most classical concertos. At last the timpani get the original knocking motive, played softly behind a wash of hushed arabesques in the piano.

The Largo seems to come from an entirely different expressive world, being in the unusually bright key of E Major. It is a simple song form in its outline but lavish in ornamental detail. At its end, Beethoven cleverly returns from the distant E Major to the home C Minor by reinterpreting the meaning of the notes in the final chord so that they become a rondo theme that grows right out of the closing chord of the slow movement. Nor does Beethoven forget that relationship once into the rondo. One of the most charming surprises in the last movement is a solo passage in which the pianist takes over from the orchestra into an “oom-pah” pattern, reinterpreted as if in the key of the Largo. But the strings hint that it is high time to end such stunts and return to the main theme and the main key.

Symphony No. 7 in A Major
The first performance of the Seventh Symphony, on December 8, 1813, in Vienna, was one of the most splendid successes of Beethoven’s life. It marked the arrival of popular recognition that he was the greatest living composer. Beethoven proudly called it “one of my most excellent works” when writing to Johann Peter Salomon to get his help in selling the score to a London publisher.

The new symphony contained difficulties that the violin section declared unperformable during rehearsals. (Rhythmic patterns are repeated so incessantly that the contemporary composer John Adams calls it “Beethoven’s minimalist symphony.”) Moreover Beethoven’s increasing deafness (still kept largely a secret) made it impossible for him to hear the softer passages in the work. At one point during the rehearsal, Beethoven conducted through a pianissimo hold and got several measures ahead of the orchestra without knowing it. He only found his place when the music reached a forte passage. Though this happened only in the rehearsal, it marked the beginning of the end of his career as an active performer.

The extraordinary energy of the Seventh Symphony has generated many interpretations from the critics, among the most famous of which is Wagner’s description, “Apotheosis of the Dance.” The air of festive jubilation was certainly linked by the first audiences with the victory over Napoleon, but many later writers have spoken of “a bacchic orgy” or “the upsurge of a powerful dionysiac impulse.” Even for a composer to whom rhythm is so important a factor in his work, the rhythmic vehemence of this symphony, in all four movements, is striking.

At the same time, Beethoven was beginning to exploit far-ranging harmonic schemes as the framework for his musical architecture. The Sixth Symphony had been elaborated from the simplest and most immediate harmonic relations. The Seventh draws on more distant keys, borrowed from the scale of the minor mode. And since Beethoven uses the same keys—A, C, and F—extensively in every movement, the symphony as a whole seems to live in a consistent and unique harmonic world.

Nowhere, not even in the opening movement of the Fifth, does Beethoven stick so single mindedly to one rhythmic pattern as in the Vivace of the Seventh. It skips along as background throughout. The slow movement was a sensation from the beginning; it had to be encored at the first public performance. The dark opening, stating the accompaniment to the entire march theme before the melody itself appears; the hypnotic repetition of a quarter note and two eighths; the alternation between major and minor, between strings and winds; the original fusion of march, rondo, and variation forms—all these contribute to the fascination of this movement.

The Presto of the third movement is a headlong rush, broken only slightly by the somewhat slower contrasting Trio. Beethoven brings the Trio around twice and hints that it might come for yet a third time (necessitating still one more round of scherzo) before dispelling our qualms with a few sharp closing chords. The closing Allegro con brio brings the symphony to its last and highest pitch of jubilation.

-Steven Ledbetter
Musicologist Steven Ledbetter writes for many orchestras, chamber ensembles, and other musical institutions throughout the United States, and has written the booklet notes for nearly 200 recordings.