Ludwig van Beethoven put his money where his mouth was. He was a free artist, not bound to the whims of dukes or kings like his older colleagues. In his third symphony from 1804, the revolutionary spirit is palpable. Originally, Beethoven was going to dedicate the symphony to Napoleon, but when he learned that Napoleon had named himself emperor he immediately, raging, changed his mind.

“Now he, too, will trample all over human rights”, a visibly agitated Beethoven supposedly cried, at least according to his friend and pupil Ferdinand Ries, who recounted the story. This happened in May 1804, just a few days after the symphony was finished. Instead of putting Napoleon’s name on the cover, he wrote Sinfonia Eroica – “heroic symphony”.

Beethoven presented in this seminal work a new kind of symphony: longer, more intensive and individualistic and more indomitable – indeed, heroic – than before. In this way, Beethoven was a musical revolutionary and entered the annals of music history as the titan he had become.

Opera singer Peter Mattei hardly needs introducing. He has made lauded performances on stages and in concert halls around the world and is hailed as one of the foremost singers in the world. At this concert, he will perform two orchestral Lieds with romantic and pastoral strokes.

Wilhelm Stenhammar wrote Floris and Blancheflour for solo voice and orchestra, his third Opus, twenty years old in the spring of 1891. Author and literary historian Oscar Levertin’s lyrics are inspired by a popular romantic story from the European Middle Ages. The story tells of prince Floris who saves his beloved, the poor girl Blancheflour, from the Emir of Babylon who has taken her as his slave. The lyrics are melancholic, even in the happier verses, and the elegantly orchestrated music has a bittersweet tone as well.

The collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, featuring German folk poems and songs, became widely popular across the German-speaking world in the 19th century. Gustav Mahler set several of the texts to music, both as individual songs with piano or orchestral accompaniment, as well as weaving them into some of his symphonies. However, for the song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, songs of a journeyman, he wrote the lyrics himself.

In the second song, Ging heut’ Morgen über’s Feld, the journeyman looks upon the world and asks: “Is it not a fine world?” Those words may not ring as true in times like these as otherwise, but beyond isolation and pandemic, there is – fortunately – still a fine world waiting for us.

Text: David Saulesco and Christina Hedlund