Saturday 28th February 2009, 8pm
Trinity College Chapel
Cambridge Beethoven Ensemble

Programme:
Mozart Don Giovanni Overture
Beethoven Triple Concerto
Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3

Conductor: Daniel Hill

Violin: Max Baillie
‘Cello: Matthijs Broersma
Piano: Ceri Owen

Tickets: £10, £8, £3 (students)
http://www.beethovenensemble.com

During the 18th century, “concertante” pieces were popular, especially in France. These are works featuring two or more solo instruments, or even a small ensemble acting as a solo group against the larger orchestra. Even Mozart had composed a Symphonie concertante. This type of composition had waned by Beethoven’s lifetime, however, making this “Triple Concerto” unusual for its era. Throughout the work, the piano trio is the star; the orchestras role is mainly accompaniment. Thus, we have an orchestral piece with some of the intimacy of chamber music. Beethoven composed this work in 1803-1804—about the same time he was working on his Symphony no. 3 (below)—perhaps for his young pupil, the Archduke Rudolf. When it was published in 1808, however, it was dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, to whom Beethoven also dedicated the “Eroica” Symphony.

On July 30, 1829, Felix Mendelssohn and his friend and traveling companion Karl Klingemann, an amateur poet and attach at the German embassy in London, wrote to his family from Edinburgh about the sightseeing he and Klingemann had done, with a particular account of their visit to the palace of Holyrood, closely associated with the romantic figure of Mary Queen of Scots. Here the illfated queen had apparently succumbed to an infatuation for an Italian lutenist named David Rizzio, for which real or imagined affair the king apparently had poor Rizzio murdered. Mendelssohn was touched by the romantic tale associated with the spot. He wrote:

We went, in the deep twilight, to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved. There is a little room to be seen there, with a winding staircase leading up to it. That is where they went up and found Rizzio in the little room, dragged him out, and three chambers away is a dark corner where they killed him. The adjoining chapel is now roofless; grass and ivy grow abundantly in it; and before the ruined altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything around is broken and moldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found the beginning of my Scotch Symphony there today.