Beethoven and his role models

Méhul, Holzbauer, Cherubini and Knecht are composers that Ludwig van Beethoven esteemed – and emulated. The Schwetzingen Festival brought their music back to life.

Your ticket to the German classical music festival scene: Concert Hour has the picks of the season — two hours of music updated regularly.

Along with host Rick Fulker, the musicians themselves are on hand to give their insights into the events and the music.

In this and the coming weeks, we visit the Schwetzingen Festival, which took place this time in October and where the focus was on Ludwig van Beethoven in the 250th year after his birth. part one:

Beethoven called Luigi Cherubini the "greatest living composer" and is even quoted as having said to him, "I'm delighted every time I hear a new work of yours and am more engaged by it than I am by my own. In short, I honor and adore you."

Listening to the dark and emotional beginning of the Overture to Cherubini's opera Lodoiska, one might think: If that doesn't sound like the beginning of a Beethoven overture, then what does?

It is said that the composer Etienne Nicolaus Méhul wrote the soundtrack to the French Revolution. Beethoven's

Fifth Symphony and Méhul's First sound a lot alike. Both in fact date from the same year.

So who had the idea first? Etienne Nicolas Méhul, in the last movement of his Symphony No. 1? Or Ludwig van Beethoven, in the first movement of his Symphony No. 5? We don't need to choose in this hour of music but can hear both.

Luigi Cherubini

Overture to the opera Lodoiska

Etienne Nicolas Méhul Symphony No. 1 in G Minor Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 5, 1st movement

Performed by:

Academy of Early Music Berlin Bernhard Forck, concertmaster

Recorded by Southwest German Radio Stuttgart in the Rococo Hall of Schwetzingen Palace on October 28, 2020

Johannes Brahms

Three Intermezzos for piano, op. 117: No. 1 (excerpt)

Fabian Müller, piano

Recorded by Southwest German Radio Stuttgart in the Mozart Hall of Schwetzingen Palace on October

27, 2020 part two:

Weather warning for this Concert Hour: there's a storm brewing. Three of them: Along with the thunderstorm in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, there's inclement weather in pieces by Justin Heinrich Knecht and Ignaz Jakob Holzbauer as well.

Holzbauer is a local hero at the Schwetzingen Festival. He was a leader of the world's best orchestra in and before Beethoven's time, the Mannheim Court Orchestra. Mannheim being nearby, they often performed in Schwetzingen Palace.

Holzbauer's storm symphony is thoroughly in the style of the Mannheim School, which set the standard for everything to come, including Viennese classicism. When on his way to Vienna as a young man, Beethoven stopped twice in Mannheim and must have been impressed and influenced by what he heard there.

It's for the Mannheim Court Orchestra that Ignaz Jakob Holzbauer wrote a short symphony depicting a storm at sea.

When Beethoven was a teenager, Justin Heinrich Knecht wrote a symphony that tells a story nearly identical to the one in the Pastoral. So, Beethoven, ever innovative, was in fact a copycat, in terms of this concept at least. Bernhard Forck, concertmaster of the Academy of Early Music Berlin, explained: "Beethoven knew it, and it can't be a coincidence that he used the program from it. The beginning of the storm, the restlessness, the fear. And then, when it's over, the relief and gratitude to the gods: It's the same series of events as in Beethoven's Pastoral. I think Knecht's symphony is a stroke of genius."

Here are the details.

Ignaz Jakob Holzbauer Symphony in E-flat Major, op. 4 No. 3

Justin Heinrich Knecht Le Portrait musical de la Nature ou Grande Symphonie (Musical Portrait of Nature or Grand Symphony)

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral), 4th and 5th movements

Performed by:

Academy of Early Music Berlin Bernhard Forck, concertmaster

Recorded by Southwest German Radio Stuttgart in the Rococo Hall of Schwetzingen Palace on October 29, 2020

Part of the Schwetzingen Palace gardens