deFilharmonie - Philippe Herreweghe

deFilharmonie continues to explore Beethoven's symphonic catalogue - which sets the standard for symphonic writing. On this occasion, the musical director Philippe Herreweghe applies his historical experience to the Second and Sixth Symphonies and the overture 'Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus'. With an eye to rhetorical detail, a sense of elegance where possible and transparency where needed, and without losing sight of the overall pattern. There was a gap of only six years between the Second and Sixth Symphonies, but for those who know Beethoven's work, it is a long period in which immense stylistic changes took place. The Second Symphony (1802) still sounds like a logical sequel to Mozart and Haydn. It seems like the word of a strikingly well-tempered Beethoven, even though he wrote it in the bleak period of the Heiligenstädter Testament. Beethoven was here crying out in despair at the first signs of his deafness. He was also tormented by thoughts of suicide resulting from his shyness and disappointment in love. The Sixth Symphony is an ode to the life of the countryside. Beethoven glorifies nature as a source of profound and uplifting peace. The titles given to each section briefly hint at a programmatic approach, but at no time does this impair the purely musical organisation of the symphonic form.