Inside Beethoven at Printworks

Thursday 23 March 2023 6pm & 9pm, Printworks

Welcome to Inside Beethoven at Printworks, as Aurora Orchestra takes a cornerstone of the classical music repertoire and explodes it across the iconic Press Halls, once the largest printing warehouse in Europe.

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What are you listening to tonight?

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 5 (performed from memory)
Nwando Ebizie Amor Fati

Beethoven’s movements will be interspersed with Nwando Ebizie’s music, so the evening will sound like this:

Beethoven Movement I: Allegro con brio
Ebizie Movement I: Lachesis

Beethoven Movement II: Andante con moto
Ebizie Movement II: Klotho

Beethoven Movement III: Scherzo: Allegro
Ebizie Movement III: Atropos

Beethoven Movement IV: Allegro – Presto
Ebizie Movement IV: Amor Fati

Feel free to move around the space in between the Beethoven movements, whilst Nwando Ebizie’s music is playing. We want you to experience the orchestra from many different angles!

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What should you listen out for?

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony opens with perhaps the most famous four notes in Western classical music. Theories have long abounded as to their origin and meaning. Do they represent the clamour of fate knocking at the door? Did they originate from the call of the yellowhammer, a tiny bird Beethoven heard chirruping in Vienna’s Prater park? Whatever these possibilities, this mighty musical theme continues to pack a punch and this evening’s performance offers the audience a rare chance, in the words of Aurora’s Creative Director, Jane Mitchell, ‘to experience this symphony from the inside’. 

Beethoven wrote his Fifth Symphony between 1804-1808. The piece was premiered at an extraordinary concert in the year of its completion, where a number of the composer’s other works were also heard for the first time, including his sixth symphony, his fourth piano concerto and two substantial works for choir and orchestra. This marathon concert lasted four hours. The hall was draughty, the orchestra under-rehearsed and the mood, accordingly, mixed. German composer and critic Johann Friedrich Reichardt wrote: ‘There we sat, in the most bitter cold, from half past six until half past ten, and confirmed for ourselves the maxim that one may easily have too much of a good thing, still more of a powerful one.’ While the response to the Fifth Symphony was somewhat cool at first, its reception warmed and in 1841, composer Robert Schumann aptly prophesied the work’s import, writing: ‘this symphony invariably wields its power over men of every age like those great phenomena of nature… [It] will be heard in future centuries, nay, as long as music and the world exist.’

This evening’s performance of the symphony invites you to ‘choose your own adventure’ through the piece. As Jane describes, ‘it’s totally up to you to decide where you want to stand for each movement and you can change your position across the evening.’ The Fifth Symphony offers a particularly thrilling piece of music to experience in this way: ‘It has such a range of emotions – from the dark, stormy first movement to the absolutely serene second movement. Then there’s the journey you go on from the murky, mysterious beginning of the third movement to that feeling of the light in the last movement. This journey is incredible to experience up close.’ 

Is there anything audiences should keep in mind during the performance? ‘I’d say have a think about what instruments you might want to explore,’ Jane suggests. ‘So if you were to stand next to the double basses in the first movement, then you could choose the woodwind for the second moment, the French horns for the third movement and perhaps the trumpets and timpani (kettle drums) for the fourth movement.’ 

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Beethoven’s movements

Each movement of the symphony also has its own strikingly different character. Jane suggests listening out for that ‘knocking motif which saturates the whole of the first movement. It can be interesting to latch onto this rhythm and then follow it throughout the movement, listening out for where it appears – which is everywhere! All the time! It’s a brilliantly intense experience.’ 

The second movement is a theme and variations – whereby a single melody is variously adjusted, embellished and reimagined. Here Jane suggests listeners might want ‘to follow the beautiful thread of the melody throughout this movement, listening to how it’s passed between the different instruments of the orchestra.’ 

The third movement is in three distinct sections. A nimble Scherzo is heard first which begins in the strings and is eventually interrupted by a bombastic entry from the horns. There follows a Trio which slinks along with multiple lines of music interweaving (a section of the score which almost defeated the players at the symphony’s premiere). The music from the Scherzo then returns, but this time much more quietly and with the strings playing pizzicato (plucking), before the volume swells as the music transitions to the symphony’s finale.

In the fourth movement, ‘joy follows sorrow, sunshine –– rain’ as Beethoven himself put it. The stormy C-minor key of the symphony’s opening is here transformed into radiant C major. Two new instruments are also heard for the first time in the symphony – trombones and a piccolo – each lending fresh power and sparkle to the ensemble for this most exhilarating of conclusions.

Kate Wakeling, Aurora Orchestra Writer-in-Residence

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Nwando Ebizie: Amor Fati

One to watch on the train home: Nwando Ebizie talks to us about the music you’ll hear tonight.

This performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony will see each of the symphony’s movements interleaved with new work from Nwando Ebizie which incorporates electronic music, film and poetry. Nwando writes:

‘I have such a strong connection with Beethoven 5. I danced it in my bedroom as a child, feeling turned over and over by it. I imagined vistas and scenes, epic skies and a hero’s journey.’  My piece – inspired by my lens, via Nietzche via Jung, through which I saw the symphony – is grounded in my practice of Afro-Fabulation, multisensory ritual practice, and access as innovative creativity. I’m excited about framing Beethoven’s music in a completely new way. By creating a multisensory, ritual experience, I hope to invite in disabled, d/Deaf and neurodivergent audiences who can access the work through different senses.’

As the audience, you are welcome to create your own journey through the symphony and Nwando’s work. ‘We hope the audience will fall in love with this music’, says Jane. ‘We want to offer audiences the chance to experience how incredible it is to stand in the middle of an orchestra – to experience this music, these instruments, these sounds from the inside.’

Kate Wakeling, Aurora Orchestra Writer-in-Residence

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Performers

Nicholas Collon conductor
Nwando Ebizie electronics

Aurora Orchestra

Liked what you heard tonight?

Or maybe there was something you thought we could do better? Either way, we’d love your feedback on tonight through our five-minute survey – it will inform our future programming of events like this.

Aurora’s next concert

We’re back at Southbank Centre on Saturday afternoon, where you can hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony presented in a concert hall, plus new music by Héloïse Werner and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Jan Lisiecki.