‘La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra’

‘I am not really pleased with the works I have written so far: from now on I want to take a new direction.’ The fateful year of 1802, when Beethoven became aware of his worsening deafness, brought about a revolution in his life and style. His Second and Fourth Symphonies do not perhaps appeal to the imagination so much as the ‘Eroica’ or the Fifth Symphony, but they are, nevertheless, masterpieces that provide evidence of his constant quest for a direction of his own. In both of these often underestimated yet crucial works, we see the outlines of his development towards a sound that is very much his own, in which Romanticism begins to dislodge the Classical ideal of Mozart and Haydn. Beethoven himself believed that ‘true art is highly individual’. In this second concert of the complete cycle of these symphonies under Alain Altinoglu, Beethoven enters into dialogue with a contemporary work commissioned by La Monnaie, a clarinet concerto by the Spanish composer Mauricio Sotelo, inspired by Beethoven’s Fourth.