Beethovennel A Szabadban – 2023 by Beethoven, De (2023/2023), Director György Vashegyi, Brunszvik-kastély parkja, Martonvasar, Hungría

Beethoven wrote four different overtures to his only opera, Fidelio (1814), a paean to loyalty and the thirst for freedom. The most popular and most-played is the Leonora Overture No. 3. Tonight, we will hear its infrequently heard relation, the Leonora Overture No. 2, notable as the version used in the world première of Fidelio, on 20 November 1805. With its seriousness and minor key, the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, which in the opening movement strikes a ‘soldierly’ sound that was particularly popular at the time, marked a turning point in Beethoven’s concertos – its format, scale and power all point the way forward. The heroic sound of Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, “Eroica”, written two years later, is a fine companion to the concerto’s military style. Famously, while Beethoven had intended to dedicate the symphony to Napoleon, when he heard that the first consul had crowned himself emperor, the composer angrily tore up the first page of the manuscript bearing Bonaparte’s name and renamed the piece Sinfonia eroica (Heroic Symphony). Symphony No. 3 is a key work: not only because the four-movement composition unfolds across changing dimensions as it anticipates the Romantic mode of expression, but also because the score provides one of the very first documents of Beethoven’s hero worship. Mihály Berecz (b. 1997) is one of the most talented members of the young generation of Hungarian pianists, while György Vashegyi (b. 1970), the new principle music director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic, is one of the most important Hungarian interpreters of the repertoire of not only Baroque music, but also the First Viennese School.