Expressing feelings through music

In this episode, we're at the Beethovenfest in Bonn, listening to a concert that took place on September 9, 2021. We'll hear both early and late works by Beethoven, including his incomparable "Pastoral" symphony. We'll also hear the world premiere of a contemporary piece by Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, and we'll learn about its surprisingly intimate connection to Beethoven.

The evening's musicians included the Basel Chamber Orchestra, violinist Carolin Widmann, and conductor Sylvain Cambreling. We'll first hear them performing two early works by Beethoven: his "romances" for violin and orchestra, written around the turn of the 19th century.

The 'Romances'

Violinist Carolin Widmann performed Beethoven's Romance for Violin and Orchestra No. 2 in F major, accompanied by the Basel Chamber Orchestra with Sylvain Cambreling conducting.

Beethoven is thought to have composed it in 1802. He wrote his Romance No. 1 a few years earlier, in 1798. We don't know who he wrote both the romances for or the context that surrounded their composition. There's no apparent event or impetus that led to their creation. Nevertheless, Widmann is a big fan of the romances.

"I love them because for me, these two miniature gems are the purest, most innocent, in the most positive way, naive early Beethoven music. And you hear it so rarely… Makes me also think, well, who was he as a person, you know? Who was this man? This is unbelievable."

Widmann is one of the most in-demand violinists of today – and considered one of the most intelligent musicians of her generation. Widmann was born in 1976 in Munich and studied violin with Igor Ozim in Cologne. She performs on a violin made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in 1782.

A new piece every year

The 2021 festival was the last one with Nike Wagner as its director. She's a great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner, and under her leadership, the festival commissioned a new piece every year.

We've got an especially interesting example coming up next. It's a piece written by the well-known Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, and it's called "Was mir Beethoven erzählt," or "What Beethoven tells me."

The composition revolves around the central drama of Beethoven's life: his deafness. It's a very personal piece – and you can tell before you even hear a single note, just by looking at the title: "What Beethoven tells me."

We'll hear Haas himself explain why it's so personal. He was sick at the time of this interview and couldn't travel, therefore it took place over the phone: "The point is that I also have tinnitus and that my tinnitus is far less severe than Beethoven's was. At some point it became clear to me that Beethoven's task in life – to write music despite his physical circumstances – also had a social and political aspect: that a person, no matter what situation they are in, has to create the art that is needed."

Violin meets contraforte

We'll hear two soloists in his composition. One is Australian Lorelei Dowling on the contraforte, which is a modern version of the contrabassoon from 2004. The other soloist is once again violinist Carolin Widmann. Together, these two musicians span a range that reaches from the highest highs to the lowest lows.

Haas' piece musically quotes one of Beethoven's most important compositions – his sixth symphony, generally known as the "Pastoral" symphony. It's also one of Beethoven's most personal compositions. Hardly any other work reveals so much about Beethoven the man – his love of nature, his sense of world harmony.

He wrote his first sketches for the symphony in 1803, but the real compositional work took place in 1807 and 1808. It premiered on December 22, 1808, in Vienna, in a concert that came to be known as Beethoven's Academy.

For Beethoven, the symphony wasn't about painting a picture through music, but about presenting a deeper experience of nature – what he termed "an expression of feeling," embodied in his symphony No. 6, the "Pastoral" symphony. It's the next piece of music in this recording, performed by the Basel Chamber Orchestra with Sylvain Cambreling conducting. The performance took place on September 9 at the Beethovenfest in Bonn.

Solo violin

In our last bit of time today, we're going to once again hear violinist Carolin Widmann. We already heard her soloing in works by Beethoven, Schubert and Georg Friedrich Haas. But Widmann is not a musician who always has to be at the center of things. She's glad to be part of a team and play chamber music when it's of artistic interest.

We'll hear her now as one of three string players in a quartet by Mozart that also includes flute. Nowadays, this tends to be a modern metal flute, but if the performers are going for a historically informed sound, you may see a wooden baroque flute, known as a traverso.

But we'll hear something different still: a wooden recorder, performed by Danish recorder player Michala Petri. The sound brings a whole new perspective to Mozart's Flute Quartet in D major, in a recording from 2010.

That's all in this edition of DW Festival Concert. Join us next time with our program host, Cristina Burack.

Performances featured in this DW Festival Concert:

1. Ludwig van Beethoven, Romance for violin and orchestra No. 2 in F major, op. 50
Performed by: Carolin Widmann, violin
Basel Chamber Orchestra
Conducted by: Sylvain Cambreling

Recorded by Deutsche Welle (DW) in the WCCB, Bonn, on September 9, 2021

2. Ludwig van Beethoven, Romance for violin and orchestra No. 1 in G major, op. 40
Performed by: Carolin Widmann, violin
Basel Chamber Orchestra
Conducted by: Sylvain Cambreling, conductor

Recorded by Deutsche Welle (DW) in the WCCB, Bonn, on September 9, 2021

3.Georg Friedrich Haas
"Was mir Beethoven erzählt" ("What Beethoven Tells Me"), concertante symphonic poem for violin, contraforte and orchestra
Lorelei Dowling, contraforte
Carolin Widmann, violin
Basel Chamber Orchestra
Sylvain Cambreling, conductor
Recorded by Deutsche Welle (DW) in the WCCB, Bonn, on September 9, 2021

4. Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 in F Major, "Pastoral," op. 68
Performed by: Basel Chamber Orchestra
Conductor: Sylvain Cambreling
Recorded by Deutsche Welle (DW) in the WCCB, Bonn, on September 9, 2021

5. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Flute Quartet in D major, KV 285, for flute, violin, viola and cello
Performed by: Michala Petri, recorder
Carolin Widmann, violin
Ula Ulijona, viola
Marta Sudraba, cello

Archive No: 4256996

Courtesy of West German Broadcasting (WDR)

Produced at Deutsche Welle with sound engineer Thomas Schmidt, producer and Russian show host Anastassia Boutsko, and host Cristina Burack. Text and production by Gaby Reucher.

Edited by: Manasi Gopalakrishnan