Lucerne Festival summer 2023

Ludwig van Beethoven is considered a “titan” in music history. He has been placed on a pedestal, his art has been transfigured into a sanctuary – and in doing so, people have quickly forgotten what a provocation his music originally represented for contemporary audiences. The three works performed by Michael Sanderling, Christian Tetzlaff and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra bear witness to this; they bring Beethoven’s revolutionary élan to life. The Egmont Overture, with its massive sarabande rhythm and the euphoric jubilation of the final “Victory Symphony,” is the epitome of heroic style. The violin concerto, with its more than 40 minutes of playing time, went beyond any measure right from the start; it irritated with a solo part in the highest register and violated all valid rules of the genre with no less than five themes in the orchestral exposition alone. The Seventh Symphony, however, which relies entirely on the elemental power of rhythm and builds up to an ecstatic frenzy, caused even such a progressive-minded contemporary as Carl Maria von Weber to doubt whether Beethoven was still in his right mind: he summarily described his colleague as “ripe for the madhouse.