Beethoven – Complete Orchestral Works Volume 4

Beethoven 7th and Egmont

Here is volume 4 in this critically acclaimed series of Beethoven’s orchestral music, containing two works from the period 1809–12.

The Seventh is certainly one of the most joyous and unclouded of Beethoven’s symphonies, and a reminder that his genius was not always a tortured or even an introverted one. Beethoven’s American biographer Maynard Solomon states that: ‘To those Viennese who heard the first performances of the Seventh … it was patently connected with the victory over Napoleon and the joyous inauguration of a long-awaited peace’.

No doubt the Egmont Overture is most familiar to us from Beethoven’s music to Goethe’s “Egmont”, but there is in fact music to the whole play: Four Entr’actes, a melodrama in which Egmont is imprisoned and awaiting his execution, a Victory Symphony, and two songs for Egmont’s mistress; Clara. In this recording Clara is beautifully interpreted by the Danish soprano Henriette Bonde-Hansen.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 In A Major, Op. 22.
1. Poco Sostenuto-Vivace
2. Allegretto
3. Presto

Beethoven: The Complete Egmont Music, Op. 84.
4. Overture
5. No. 1 Lied
6. No. 2 Zwischenmusik I
7. No. 3 Zwischenmusik Ii
8. No. 4 Lied
9. No. 5 Zwischenmusik Iii
10. No. 6 Zwischenmusik Iv
11. No. 7 Klärchens Tod Bezeichnend
12. No. 8 Melodrama
13. No. 9 Siegessymphonie