Prague Spring • Levit & Fischer & Czech Philharmonic

I was greatly occupied with my revisions for Fidelio, but when I received an offer to create the incidental music for Egmont in 1809 I did not hesitate for a second. Goethe’s language always set me in the right mood and incited me to write. Moreover, I was profoundly moved by Egmont’s story, all the more so given that it takes place in Flanders – the land of my forebears. In the overture I outlined the main points in the plot. It begins with the indictment by the Spanish judges in the low strings, with Klärchen’s tender plea for mercy for her beloved heard above them – first in the oboe and bassoon, then in the flutes and clarinets. Egmont’s heroism in the final moments before his death is expressed in the closing deafening fortissimo. Heroism as a call to fight against oppression and tyranny.

I have fond memories of the premiere of my third piano concerto, held at the Theater an der Wien on the 5th of April, 1803. We only had a single rehearsal for the entire programme and, moreover, the best of Vienna’s musicians had been hired by the competition who decided to present Haydn’s Creation that same evening. We began at eight in the morning and by half past two in the afternoon everyone was so exhausted that Prince Lichnowsky promptly sent for large baskets of bread, smoked meats and wine and invited all the musicians to the table. They ate their fill and the creative and friendly atmosphere was immediately restored! The theatre’s new music director Ignaz von Seyfried agreed to be my page-turner at the concert. (He chuckles.) But it might be better if he described the event himself. “I saw empty pages with here and there what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs. Beethoven played most of the piano part from memory, and whenever he reached the end of some invisible passage, he gave me a surreptitious nod and I turned the page. My anxiety not to miss such a nod amused him greatly and the recollection of it at our convivial dinner after the concert sent him into gales of laughter.” There you have it. And they say I was a grouch and not predisposed to merriment!

While Beethoven embraced the ideas of the French Revolution spreading like an avalanche across Europe, his teacher Haydn viewed them with distrust. In 1798 the political and financial instability of the Habsburg monarchy filled him with similar concerns. This is also why he initially gave his new work – Mass in D minor – the title Missa in angustiis (Mass for Troubled Times). The work was a commission for Prince Nikolaus II, the grandson of Nikolaus I, “the Magnificent”, Haydn’s benefactor of many years from the house of Esterházy. The subtitle Nelson Mass arose spontaneously out of Haydn’s great regard for the British Admiral Horatio Nelson who, at the beginning of August 1798, when the composer was working on his Mass in D minor, defeated Napoleon’s fleet at Aboukir Bay (Battle of the Nile). Among Haydn’s thirteen masses, the Mass in D minor, together with The Creation and The Seasons, represents the culmination of his vocal-instrumental oeuvre. It will be a rewarding experience to hear this work performed by one of the greatest authorities on Haydn’s music, the founder of the Austrian-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic and the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt, Hungarian conductor Ádám Fischer. For his lifetime contribution to classical music, which reflects his many projects with such institutions as the Bayreuth and Salzburg festivals, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala and the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, Ádám Fischer received the coveted International Classical Music Award in 2022.