Schubert / Beethoven, P. Herreweghe
On Sunday 14 February 2027, the Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, the Paris-based orchestra he founded, perform works by two great composers. Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 7 in B minor, D 759, “Unfinished”, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 will delight audiences on Valentine's Day at Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Since its foundation in 1991, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées has specialised in performing music from a repertoire that ranges from Haydn to Debussy, on period instruments.
Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, either his Seventh or Eighth, depending on the numbering system used to describe it, consists of two completed movements. There is a fragment for a third movement and nothing at all that has survived for the fourth that some think was planned. Certainly, a four-movement symphony would have been the convention when it was written in 1822. In any case, the partial manuscript was given to Anselm Hüttenbrenner by Schubert himself in 1823 in gratitude for the honorary diploma the Graz Music Society awarded the composer. Hüttenbrenner only released the score around 40 years later and the symphony went on to be first performed in its two-movement form on 17 December 1865 at Vienna's Musikverein, conducted by Johann Herbeck. It has been a popular concert work ever since despite, or perhaps because of, its intriguingly incomplete nature.
When Beethoven penned his Seventh Symphony, it constituted a return to symphonic writing for the great German. It had been three years since he first presented his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies in 1808. Composed in 1811 and 1812, the work was first performed the following year. Beethoven himself conducted it on 8 December 1813 at the University of Vienna for a charitable event for soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau during the Napoleonic Wars. The four-movement symphony is characterised by a long and beautifully orchestrated introduction that eventually gives way to energetic music that doesn't let up until the end, with plenty of dynamism that keeps the listener engaged throughout. At its premiere, the second movement, the Allegretto, was such a success that the audience asked for an encore and it was performed again immediately. Since then, it has remained one of Beethoven's most admired orchestral movements.
Philippe Herreweghe has enjoyed an illustrious career. He started conducting while studying in his home city of Ghent, founding the Collegium Vocale Gent in 1970. He went on to focus on an authentic approach to baroque music, leading to the foundation of another ensemble, La Chapelle Royale, in Paris in 1977. Herreweghe and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées are in demand around the world as leading exponents of historically informed performance, making this performance at Venice's Gran Teatro La Fenice a fitting opportunity to experience two early Romantic-era masterpieces.