Beethoven, Schubert

Continuing our celebration of Beethoven’s bicentenary, we welcome the brooding Leonore Overture No. 3. Composed by Beethoven in 1806, Leonore Overture No. 3 musically retells the story of the opera Fidelio, where a courageous wife disguises herself as a man and rescues her husband from unjustified imprisonment. Beethoven wrote four overtures to open his opera. Considering the third to be too epic, it was replaced by the less substantial Fidelio Overture and Leonore Overture No. 3 survived as a deserving standalone work.

We then turn to two composers closer to home. Elana Kats-Chernin is a Uzbek SSR-born, Australian-based composer who’s Eliza’s Aria balances the beautiful with the delicate and is like a romantic ode to the person you love. Anthony Ritchie’s A Bugle will do follows and was written to commemorate the death of Aotearoa New Zealand war hero Sir Charles Upham.

Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished) is a work that is lyrical and unresolved with plenty of symphonic drama. Composed in 1822 by Austrian composer Franz Schubert, the work was left unfinished with only two movements before he moved on to other projects. Why he left Symphony No. 8 unfinished, we’ll never know, but its evocation, led by restless strings, still haunts us today.

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