Beethoven’s Third With Forés-Veses by Butterworth, Delius, Ravel, Beethoven, De la (2023/2023), Dirijor Roberto Forés Veses, Cadogan Hall, London, United Kingdom

Roberto Forés Veses returns to conduct the ECO in a powerful programme featuring Beethoven’s Third Symphony, with a first half combining works composed by Butterworth, Delius and Ravel. Butterworth’s Banks of Green Willow, described as an idyll by the composer and featuring folk melodies of the day, is paired with another English work, Delius’ On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. It is a wonderful tone poem extolling the joys of the English countryside. A contemporary of both Butterworth and Delius, Ravel dedicated each movement of Le tombeau de Couperin to his fallen friends who died in battle during the First World War. Rather than a sombre memorial, the work has a reflective but light-hearted mood that echoes the trend at the time of returning to the grand siècle of French culture and the older French style of music. Beethoven’s compelling Third Symphony was originally dedicated to Napoleon. Beethoven had a major change of heart and withdrew his dedication upon realising that Napoleon “will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!”