Philharmonia Orchestra / Johan Dalene / Ryan Bancroft

In this concert, the excellent Philharmonia Orchestra from London takes its audience on a trip to Scandinavia. It is led by the Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene – one of today’s top young violin stars. Unfortunately, Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was originally scheduled to conduct the concert, was unable to do so due to illness. The young American star conductor Ryan Bancroft, who recently made his debut at the Elbphilharmonie, thankfully stepped in at short notice. Instead of the Leonore Overture No. 2, the concert will open with No. 3.

Dalene gives his special support to the music of North European composers such as Carl Nielsen. Nielsen belongs to the standard repertoire in his native Denmark and in the English-speaking world, but he is still too rarely heard in Germany. His Violin Concerto, Op. 33, with its bold panache is as much of a hit today as it was at the 1912 premiere.

In the autumn of 1805, after a long and intensive period of work, Ludwig van Beethoven completed his first and only opera »Leonore«, which would later enter the music history books – in a modified version – as »Fidelio«. Beethoven had long entertained the idea of composing a work for the stage. He had a »rescue and liberation opera« in mind, akin to the maxims of the Enlightenment he had made his own.

The subjects he was offered did not suit his tastes though. To make matters worse, Beethoven’s main artistic focus up to that point had been instrumental music. So writing a large-scale vocal work, with individual »numbers« and broadly structured, textually linked passages, was a challenging prospect for the composer. It was only when he received the libretto »Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal« by the French composer Jean-Nicolas Bouilly in 1804 that Beethoven saw the opportunity to dedicate his efforts to the vast undertaking of composing an opera.

Writing the overture was particularly difficult: It was intended to spark the audience’s interest, serve as an instrumental prologue to the rest of the work, also create some degree of context. Beethoven’s »Leonore Overture« is a highly dramatic, musically condensed work that anticipates pivotal moments in the plot of the opera, where a woman attempts to free her husband from the state prison in Seville, risking her own life in the process.

The very first bars transport the listener from C major down a dark descending scale, as it were, into Florestan’s dungeon, before the theme of his aria »In des Lebens Frühlingstagen« emerges in the woodwinds in A flat major. The trumpet signals from the final act of the opera, so crucial to the narrative, can also be heard in the overture. They are a musical confirmation of the hero’s freedom, in the form of a jubilant C major coda.

The press reviews following the premiere on 20 November 1805 make it abundantly clear that the overture was a contributing factor in the opera’s failure. One critic complained that it consisted of »a very long Adagio, disjointed in all keys, followed by an Allegro in C major that was not excellent either«. Overall, the work was deemed »in no way comparable to other instrumental compositions by Beethoven«. The opera only ran for three nights as a result, before being removed from the program. This prompted Beethoven to revise it several times afterwards. And by the time the final version of the opera »Fidelio« was finished, the self-critical composer had written a total of three more versions of the overture. Although their genetic make-up is the same, they each relate to the opera in different ways.

The second version dating from 1806, known as the »Leonore Overture No. 3« due to an incorrect dating, and performed tonight by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Ryan Bancroft, shows how Beethoven worked out the essence of the opera compositionally: As well as outlining the plot, the music also illuminates its various moods and the emotional states of the protagonists. The impactful »Leonore 3« soon established itself independently of the stage in the concert hall, claiming a permanent place in the symphonic repertoire.

The quest for the right musical form was also a preoccupation of the Danish composer Carl Nielsen when he set about work on his first violin concerto in 1911. By this time, the then 46-year-old had already composed two operas and two major symphonies, establishing himself as a composer of some acclaim in his native Denmark. He had yet to write a work that was a truly resounding success however. Nielsen had been pondering the idea of composing an instrumental concerto for a long time, but had never actually put his thoughts into practice. Having completed his Third Symphony in June 1911, he was invited by Nina Grieg, the widow of the famous Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, to her country estate, where he finally felt the time had come to devote himself to this undertaking. Nielsen wrote to his wife Anna at the time: »There is sweet peace and quiet here, and I believe I can achieve something.« The work did not come easily to him however, and it was not until December 1911 that Nielsen declared the concerto complete.

The challenge of combining the given conventions of the genre with his own compositional inclinations led Nielsen to a rather unconventional musical structure for the work in the end. He decided to break away from the three-movement structure of the concerto, which had been typical of this genre ever since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He divided his work into two contrasting movements instead, each consisting of a slow introduction followed by sweeping, fast-paced sections. More than anything, it was highly unusual to have the violin’s first solo – accompanied by horns and bassoons – right at the very beginning of the first movement.

The violinist Johan Dalene performed as a Rising Star in the Elbphilharmonie back in 2022. In performing this concerto, he joins the ranks of outstanding Nordic virtuosos who have taken on this work. The solo violin was at the heart of Nielsen’s compositional efforts, and he had the Dane Peder Møller in mind, to whom he dedicated this work. It was Møller too who gave an outstanding first performance of the concerto on 28 February 1912 at the Odd Fellows Mansion in Copenhagen, after just a short period of rehearsals.

The world premiere of the concerto, performed alongside Nielsen’s Third Symphony, was a tremendous success and helped Nielsen achieve his long-awaited breakthrough as a composer. The concert was widely reported in the press. And although the unconventional structure of Opus 33 was criticized in places, the majority of critics agreed that it was a masterpiece. »The concerto as a whole is a strange work,« wrote the newspaper »Aftonbladet«. »It could be two different works played separately. Besides that, an excellent piece of violin music: the passionate, singing Andante; the joyful finale, which plays the Harlequin in some witty passages that are also tinged with melancholy – a brilliantly composed work.« Inspired by this success, Nielsen felt a sense of affirmation and wrote in a letter revealing a charming dose of self-irony: »My ›success‹ was overwhelming and it is still the talk of the town; my nose is about 17 centimetres higher up in the air!«