- first movement analysis in [[]] Gardiner and the ORR on Beethoven's Symphonies Video title: Symphony No. 3 'Eroica': Heroism & shock tactics | Gardiner and the ORR on Beethoven's Symphonies Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io91Hvh4XvQ i don't feel it's that i think feel that a lot of the ideas that went into the eroica symphony are already there in embryo in the second symphony but having said that um his canvas has expanded enormously he's writing on a different scale in every sense i mean the first movement alone of the oroka symphony is longer than anything anybody's ever produced before but it's so clear that it's got a a much more urgent political subtext i mean he starts off with two colossal great chords and would and he is clearly reflecting his political thoughts this and the fifth symphony are the two symphonies that that seem like uh manifestos and it's associated in this case with the name napoleon bonaparte who was pretty much exact contemporary of beethoven and of course this is a well-known story about how when he heard that napoleon had been crowned by the pope and made emperor for life that he was furious and and totally disillusioned and ripped off the title page with its dedication that may be anecdotal it may be true but i think it's sidetracking what's really important here which is that he's postulating a kind of promethean hero who stole the fire from the gods i think much more than the first or second seventies the heroica uh highlights and pushes into the foreground this whole concept of form and structure musical structure as being not simply um a uh a coat hanger a scaffolding on which he can hang his ideas but actually it's a musical element in its own right that the the structure of the music becomes the substance i mean you've got ⭐️struggle and effort⭐️ in the first movement you've got death in the second movement you've got rebirth in the schedule and you get glorification in in the finale so there are four different steps and this is brand new in a symphony and it's revealed um very much in the remark that um ferdinand reese is his pupil makes when he says in my opinion it is the greatest work beethoven has yet written he played it for me recently and i believe that heaven and earth will tremble when it's performed for the first time do [Music] so [Music] the first movement of the eureka symphony lasts for 690 bars i mean that's preposterous it's exhausting it's exhausting to conduct it's exhausting to play it's exhausting to listen to because he doesn't let up on it and it's not as if it's monochrome chromatic in any way at all it's composed of of very very clearly defined segments welted together in the most beautiful way he he had a sense of of his own personal grandeur and he said my nobility is here and here pointing to his his head and his heart and you feel that in the eroka symphony and that's even more clear in the slow movement the funeral march [Music] again has a french revolutionary origin it's a marsh lugubra by the french revolution composer gossip it creates such a powerful sensation of deep mourning deep tragedy and only marginal hope [Music] the hope comes in the sketcher that follows and it's not an in-your-face type of hope it's a very secretive muttered pianissimo to start with and with a motor perpetual says [Music] [Music] lively [Music] it's not until you get to the horn theme for the trio of horns this is the first time that he writes the three horns that you sense that this is a resurrection waving banners it's a celebration [Music] careful one two three the finale of the heroic symphony is a banana skin for a conductor for an orchestra and for the listener because after the opening flourish there's a lot of kind of um hysteria and and almost chaos you're left with a kind of bare-boned skeleton line which is the baseline of a contradance that he used in prometheus in the ballet music he'd written for four or five years before you built up a head of steam so you arrive at the fermata and you think something enormous is going to happen and then it's ridiculous quite ridiculous this sort of nonsensical squeaky little elephant [Music] [Music] come on and you think this is most unpromising i mean how can any finale which should be such a kind of um triumphant conclusion to this extraordinary symphony be based on such a trivial and unpromising tune is this beethoven being you know having a laugh taking the mickey what's he doing and it's only in the course of the variations because it's constructed in a series of variations on this this baseline that you realize that um it's actually an epic journey of of of celebration in order to achieve his end goal he has to start with the smallest and the most kind of unpromising of means [Music] the challenge for every performance every performer is to find the key to unlocking that structural magnificence and grandeur of the piece the key to it to me of the whole movement comes in the pocomandante which is three-quarters of the way through when he turns the the theme of the prometheus ballet music into the most beautiful lyrical hymn of thanks it's like the haligadanka song of these last quartets [Music] here is an early example to me and we're going to meet it in a lot of the later symphonies of beethoven the religious composer religious not in a strictly christian sense more in a kind of pantheistic vein um somebody who locates the supreme being the the godhead um in nature and in the beneficence of nature and this is something that is going to crop up very much in the pastoral symphony and also in the ninth symphony that is already adam rated here in this slow section of the aroca the finale [Music] [Music]