≈ 2 hours · With intermission
Last updated: September 11, 2018
The Beethoven symphonies are central to the life of musicians and audiences. Over the course of these nine masterpieces, Beethoven evolved not just his own music, but revolutionized all of music in a way and at a pace hitherto unprecedented. From the classical strains of his first to the universal themes of his last, there is not a single note out of place, not a single bar wasted, not a single idea unexplored. He challenges the orchestra to be its best. He demands rigour and attention of performers and listeners alike. And why? In order to express, through the abstract language of music, the most fundamental and tangible shared emotions of humankind. Joy, passion, warmth, mourning, hope, loss, melancholy, peace, victory, struggle, solidarity, desperation, reverence, simplicity... I cannot think of a state of mind that is not in one way or another expressed through this music.
As we begin our 50th anniversary season, we also begin our next artistic chapter in a reinvigorated Southam Hall with its glorious new shell and acoustic. I can conceive of no better way to explore every inch of this new space than with a fresh take on this most complete and all-encompassing of symphonic cycles. It is my great privilege to share this new stage with the incomparable musicians of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, who will interpret and form every note of this cycle with passion, detail, verve and love. And it is our great pleasure to share this musical Everest, this cornerstone of artistic output, with you, our dear audience. For 50 years, you have listened and responded. For 50 years, you have been instrumental in thousands of performances in this space. We are deeply grateful to you for that. Here’s to the new season, to the new hall and to a bright future for this wonderful, wonderful orchestra!
Repertoire
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
The Seventh may well be the most frequently played of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, the Fifth notwithstanding. The Ninth may be the most beloved today (it was not always so), but it requires vastly larger forces than the Seventh, well beyond the means of many amateur and semi-professional orchestras. The Seventh requires only a modest-sized orchestra (pairs of woodwinds, horns, trumpets and timpani in addition to strings), but the sheer visceral impact it makes virtually guarantees a successful performance by even the least accomplished of ensembles. “The sound itself creates the actual and personal physical contact: in sports language, it ‘tackles’ you, so that you will not quickly return to normal,” writes Klaus G. Roy, former program annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra.
When Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was first performed in the large hall of the University of Vienna on December 8, 1813, it was immediately hailed as a sensational achievement, a judgment maintained continuously down to the present day. “All persons, however they had previously dissented from his music, now agreed to award him his laurels,” wrote Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s first biographer.
The occasion of that world premiere was a gala benefit concert for Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded in the Battle of Hanau, which had occurred a few weeks earlier. This was also the event at which the noisy spectacle Wellington’s Victory, or The Battle of Vitoria, was first performed, a huge success at the time but now regarded as something of an embarrassment.
Many of Europe’s musical luminaries, including Salieri, Spohr, Moscheles, Hummel, Meyerbeer, Romberg and Dragonetti played in the orchestra, lending an extra air of celebration to the concert. Beethoven himself conducted. Adding further zest was the presence of Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, inventor of both the metronome and of the mechanical instrument for which Wellington’s Victory had originally been written, the Panharmonicon (Beethoven subsequently rewrote it for orchestra).
The enthusiasm aroused by this symphony over more than two centuries and countless thousands of performances have generated reams of eloquent praise. Ernest Newman saw it as inducing a “divine intoxication of the spirit.” Alexander Oulibicheff called it “a masquerade of a multitude drunk with joy.” Wagner, never a man to shy away from offering his opinion, offered these words: “All tumult, all yearning and storming of the heart, become here the blissful insolence of joy, which carries us away with bacchanalian power through the roomy space of nature, through all the streams and seas of life, shouting in glad self-consciousness as we sound through the universe the daring strains of this human sphere-dance. The symphony is the Apotheosis of the Dance itself: it is Dance in its highest aspect, the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated into an ideal mould of tone.”
Or consider this remark from another Cleveland Orchestra annotator, Peter Laki: “Every rock musician knows how intoxicating the constant repetition of simple rhythmic patterns can be. That’s part of what Beethoven did here, but he did much more: against a backdrop of continually repeated dance rhythms, he created an endless diversity of melodic and harmonic events. There is a strong sense of cohesion as the melodies flow into one another with inimitable spontaneity. At the same time, the harmonies, melodies, dynamics and orchestration are full of the most delightful surprises. It is somewhat like riding in a car at a constant high speed while watching an ever-changing, beautiful landscape pass by.”
Unquestionably the driving force of the Seventh Symphony is rhythm. Throughout each movement runs a single rhythmic pattern (two in the third movement) that propels it relentlessly, irresistibly forward with cumulative energy. The effect in the first movement, on most listeners, is exuberant, in the second mildly hypnotic, in the third boisterously athletic and in the fourth something akin to a full-scale Bacchanalia. Beethoven himself said of the finale: “I am Bacchus incarnate, to give humanity wine to drown its sorrow... [Each person] who divines the secret of my music is delivered from the misery that haunts the world.”
The introduction to the first movement is the longest such passage Beethoven (or anyone else up to that time) had ever written for a symphony, amounting almost to an entire movement in itself and lasting a third of the movement’s approximately twelve-minute length. It contains its own pair of themes and defines the harmonic regions that will have reverberations throughout the rest of the symphony. The transition to the main Vivace section is scarcely less imaginative and extraordinary, consisting of 68 repetitions of the same note (E) to varied rhythms. These eventually settle into the pattern that pervades the entire Vivace section. From here Beethoven propels us through a sonata-form movement of bold harmonic changes, startling alternations of loud and soft, and an obsessive display of the pervasive rhythmic motif often described as dactylic. A dactyl is a measure of poetic scansion consisting of a long followed by two shorts, but Beethoven’s dactyls are a variant, amounting to a rhythmic relationship of 3:1:2 (a long, a “short” short, and a “long” short). Once the main Vivace portion of the movement is launched, there is scarcely a single bar that does not contain this rhythmic motif.
The second movement (Allegretto) is hardly a “slow” one, but it is more restrained and soothing than the frenetic first movement. Again, an underlying rhythmic pattern pervades (here we find the perfect dactyl). The virtually melody-less principal “theme” in A minor is heard in constantly changing orchestral garb. There is also a lyrical episode of surpassing beauty in A major (woodwinds) and a stormy fugato built from the principal theme. The audience at the first performance liked this movement so much that it demanded an encore on the spot.
The third movement is a double Scherzo and Trio (scherzo-trio-scherzo-trio-scherzo). The slower Trio sections, with their accordion-like swells and strange growling from the second horn, are believed by some to have been based on an old Austrian pilgrims’ hymn. With characteristic humour, Beethoven threatens to present the Trio a third time (“What, again?” is the expected reaction from the listener), but suddenly dismisses it with five brusque chords from the full orchestra (“That’s e-nough of that!”)
The final movement eclipses all previous ones in its intoxicating exhibition of sonic power, sweeping listeners instantly into its orbit and holding them fast until the symphony hurtles to an abrupt stop seven or eight minutes later.
Mario Bernardi led the NAC Orchestra in their first performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony in 1970. In 2014, the Orchestra played this work on their tour of the United Kingdom with Pinchas Zukerman conducting, and in 2018, again in Southam Hall, this time with Xian Zhang on the podium.
By Robert Markow
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93
The first public performance of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony took place under the composer’s direction in the Grand Redoutensaal in Vienna on February 27, 1814. Probably because of ill-considered programming, it met with a cool reception, sandwiched as it was between the powerful, highly-charged Seventh Symphony and the bombastic Battle Symphony (Wellington’s Victory) complete with extra trumpets, drums, cannon and rifle fire.
The Eighth has earned a reputation as one of Beethoven’s “lesser” symphonies, not to be compared with such unquestioned masterworks as the Eroica or the Ninth. Give or take a few minutes, it is also the shortest Beethoven symphony. Yet, in its own ways, the Eighth is as original and interesting a work as most other symphonies of Beethoven. Consider the generous amount of humour – surely more here than in any other Beethoven symphony. This includes the sudden outbursts in 2/4 metre within the 3/4 first movement, the “tick-tock” effect in the second movement, the rhythmic ambiguity at the beginning of the third movement, the quick “um-pahs” of the timpani in the finale, and much more – unexpected pauses, unprepared gestures, surprise intrusions of loud and soft notes, etc. Beethoven himself referred to the symphony as aufgeknöpft (unbuttoned).
One should, however, avoid the temptation to read into the work a reflection of the composer’s personal life at the time of writing, for he was going through one of the most tortured periods of his existence. A persistent stomach ailment; the deepest love affair of his life (with Antonie Brentano), which was doomed, like all the rest, to failure; and his interference in the love life of his brother Johann all made for anything but the happy, joyous mood evinced in the Eighth Symphony.
With a burst of energy, the symphony begins immediately with the first theme – a bright, well-balanced, classical-style theme consisting of “question and answer” phrases. The second subject is a graceful, lilting melody in the violins. Further melodic material is heard as a closing theme.
Beethoven omits the usual slow movement, using in its place a rather animated Allegretto scherzando. Legend has it that this movement was written as a humorous tribute to Beethoven’s friend Mälzel, inventor of the metronome. Scholars are not agreed on the matter, but this detracts not a whit from the unavoidable feeling that there is some kind of tick-tock mechanism at work. One is tempted to think back also to Haydn’s Clock Symphony (No. 101) with its ticking second movement.
For the third movement, Beethoven returned to the 18th-century world of the minuet, but this “minuet” is unusually robust and heavy-footed, almost like the scherzos found in all his previous symphonies except the First. A typical Beethovenian joke is seen in the designation of the movement as Tempo di Menuetto – not a real minuet, apparently, just the tempo of a minuet! The central section is a gracious and elegant Trio for two horns and clarinet, plus cello accompaniment.
The boisterous finale is chock full of jollity and musical jokes, which include surprise pauses, violent harmonic shifts, a false recapitulation and a deliberately overdone ending.
The NAC Orchestra performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 for the first time in 1970 with Mario Bernardi on the podium, and most recently in 2014 with John Storgårds conducting. The Orchestra also gave performances of this work on two tours: a tour of Canada in 1992 under the direction of Victor Feldbrill and a tour of Europe in 1995 led by Trevor Pinnock.
By Robert Markow
Artists
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“A natural communicator, both on and off the podium” (The Telegraph), Alexander Shelley performs across six continents with the world’s finest orchestras and soloists.
With a conducting technique described as “immaculate” (Yorkshire Post) and a “precision, distinction and beauty of gesture not seen since Lorin Maazel” (Le Devoir), Shelley is known for the clarity and integrity of his interpretations and the creativity and vision of his programming. To date, he has spearheaded over 40 major world premieres, highly praised cycles of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms symphonies, operas, ballets, and innovative multi-media productions.
Since 2015, he has served as Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra and Principal Associate Conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In April 2023, he was appointed Artistic and Music Director of Artis–Naples in Florida, providing artistic leadership for the Naples Philharmonic and the entire multidisciplinary arts organization. The 2024-2025 season is Shelley’s inaugural season in this position.
Additional 2024-2025 season highlights include performances with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and the National Symphony of Ireland. Shelley is a regular guest with some of the finest orchestras of Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australasia, including Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Helsinki, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Malaysian, Oslo, Rotterdam and Stockholm philharmonic orchestras and the Sao Paulo, Houston, Seattle, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Montreal, Toronto, Munich, Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand symphony orchestras.
In September 2015, Shelley succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, the youngest in its history. The ensemble has since been praised as “an orchestra transformed ... hungry, bold, and unleashed” (Ottawa Citizen), and his programming is credited for turning the orchestra “almost overnight ... into one of the more audacious orchestras in North America” (Maclean’s). Together, they have undertaken major tours of Canada, Europe, and Carnegie Hall, where they premiered Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 13.
They have commissioned ground-breaking projects such as Life Reflected and Encount3rs, released multiple JUNO-nominated albums and, most recently, responded to the pandemic and social justice issues of the era with the NACO Live and Undisrupted video series.
In August 2017, Shelley concluded his eight-year tenure as Chief Conductor of the Nurnberger Symphoniker, a period hailed by press and audiences alike as a golden era for the orchestra.
Shelley’s operatic engagements have included The Merry Widow and Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet (Royal Danish Opera), La bohème (Opera Lyra/National Arts Centre), Louis Riel (Canadian Opera Company/National Arts Centre), lolanta (Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen), Così fan tutte (Opera National de Montpellier), The Marriage of Figaro (Opera North), Tosca (Innsbruck), and both Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni in semi-staged productions at the NAC.
Winner of the ECHO Music Prize and the Deutsche Grunderpreis, Shelley was conferred with the Cross of the Federal Order of Merit by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in April 2023 in recognition of his services to music and culture.
Through his work as Founder and Artistic Director of the Schumann Camerata and their pioneering “440Hz” series in Dusseldorf, as founding Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen’s “Zukunftslabor” and through his regular tours leading Germany’s National Youth Orchestra, inspiring future generations of classical musicians and listeners has always been central to Shelley’s work.
He regularly gives informed and passionate pre- and post-concert talks on his programs, as well as numerous interviews and podcasts on the role of classical music in society. In Nuremberg alone, over nine years, he hosted over half a million people at the annual Klassik Open Air concert, Europe’s largest classical music event.
Born in London in October 1979 to celebrated concert pianists, Shelley studied cello and conducting in Germany and first gained widespread attention when he was unanimously awarded first prize at the 2005 Leeds Conductors’ Competition, with the press describing him as “the most exciting and gifted young conductor to have taken this highly prestigious award.”
The Music Director role is supported by Elinor Gill Ratcliffe, C.M., ONL, LL.D. (hc).
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