RSO concert a celebration of Beethoven
A NIGHT OF BEETHOVEN Regina Symphony Orchestra with the Hoebig-Moroz Trio When: 8 p.m., Saturday
Where: Conexus Arts Centre
A proverbial rock star in classical music, Ludwig van Beethoven has long been considered the creme de la creme of composers, and clearly the Regina Symphony Orchestra believes he belongs in that conversation as its show Saturday celebrates three of his prodigious works.
Part of the Mosaic Masterworks series, the program aptly named A Night of Beethoven includes an overture, a triple concerto and one of his iconic symphonies all in one evening.
RSO music director and conductor Gordon Gerrard says what made the German composer so important is the way his music was unusually expressive.
“He really was a trailblazer,” Gerrard says. “He took music from this polite and fairly harmless dirge and turned it into this vehicle for human emotion. To really understand the context of it now is kind of difficult for us but it was quite revolutionary and controversial at the time. The music, the power, the drama, the connection to human emotion still very much comes across today, 200 years later.”
Saturday’s program, which begins with the Coriolan Overture, a piece written for Heinrich Joseph von Collin’s 1804 play Coriolan, is Beethoven at his best Gerrard says: “dark and dramatic.”
The first half continues with the famed Hoebig-Moroz Trio joining the symphony for the rarely performed Concerto for Violin, Violoncello and Piano in C Major, better known as the Triple Concerto.
“A concerto,” Gerrard explains, “is a piece that often features one soloist with the orchestra but this one is played with three soloists — a violinist, a cellist and pianist. It’s a great piece and it’s very rarely performed, so that will be a nice treat, I think.
“It often doesn’t fit practically into a program. Often you have one soloist that will play a concerto, so it’s not that common you have an already existing trio like we have with the Hoebig-Moroz Trio or an ensemble that’s played together for a long time.”
After a brief intermission, the orchestra will tackle Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, best known as his four-movement Eroica Symphony.
It’s a program Gerrard believes is not only a phenomenal experience for the symphony’s patrons on Saturday, but the local orchestra.
“These are pieces that every musician knows and has played many times but in a way it’s always this monumental challenge. I think there’s a great sense of determination when you approach a work like this, and some pride, as this is the gold standard of orchestral writing, so to be able to put this together is a test but also an opportunity for the ensemble.”
“This is sort of Beethoven at his best,” he adds. “It shows the virtuosity of the players and it also shows the ability of live orchestral music to communicate some pretty hard-hitting emotional things. It’s musical drama at its finest as far as an orchestra is concerned.”