BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Monday, March 13, 1826 (approximately)
Either today or early tomorrow morning (before 8 a.m.), Beethoven starts a shopping list:
- Cotton.
- A dust broom.
Conversation Book 106, 29r
The season’s second concert of the London Philharmonic Society is held today, with Henry Rowley Bishop (1787-1856), a founding member of the Society, conducting. It does not go well. The second act of the concert opens with Beethoven’s Symphony in B-flat [Nr.4]. The reviewer in The Harmonicon, Nr.XL (April 1826) at 400 was none too pleased: “We pass from the first to the second concert with a painful recollection of the excellence of the one, and the imperfections of the other. Never were two performances so contrasted: though, except the concertante [by Swedish composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775-1838), his op.3], the selection was well made; but the performance was such as we are accustomed to hear at benefits which have no rehearsals, and where a want of discipline most commonly prevails. Haydn’s symphony, the eleventh of Salomon’s set [Symphony Nr.103 in E-flat, the ‘Drumroll‘], is comparatively, little known, and, though not equal to others of the twelve, is a charming composition. Beethoven’s in B. [sic] is in the opinion of many almost his chef d’oeuvre.”
An anonymous correspondent on the same page of this issue of The Harmonicon was even harsher: “The Second Concert has already been severely criticized in a daily journal, and I think not with strict justice; for much blame is heaped on Mr. Mercke, who, whether possessing great talent or otherwise, was certainly not the only one deserving of censure in the concertante by Crussel, [sic] than which we have seldom heard a more contemptible composition. The Symphonies suffered materially from the causes already mentioned [playing faster than the orchestra members can manage being among the chief complaints], especially the first allegro of Haydn, No. 11, as well as the scherzo, and last movement of Beethoven’s in B flat: the time of the latter is marked allegro non troppo: the passages throughout are of a chromatic nature, distributed equally among the basses and violins, and when played, or rather attempted, prestissimo, become a limping race, and make us lament the error in judgment of those whose department it ought to be to regulate these matters, (whether leaders or conductors, we will not presume to determine) by which disappointment and mortification are excited instead of that intellectual delight which such music is capable of affording.”
The Fourth Symphony is here performed (much better) live in 2016 by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada: