Music department will present Beethoven and Mozart this week

The Cornell Symphony Orchestra, led by John Hsu, presents an all-Beethoven concert Feb. 23 at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall. The program features the "Egmont" Overture, the Fifth Piano Concerto and the Fifth Symphony. The concert is free and open to the public.

In 1809 Beethoven was commissioned to supply incidental music for a production of Goethe's Egmont. The composer was enthusiastic about the play, because it dealt with a campaign for national liberation, albeit in 16th century Flanders. The tale poignantly combines tragedy with triumph: A Flemish nobleman, rebelling against Spanish rule, gives his life for a cause that would ultimately succeed. Beethoven's overture, the only part of the score still regularly performed, foreshadows this victorious outcome.

The orchestra, with guest soloist Emily Green, a senior College Scholar and linguistics major, then presents Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, op. 73. The concerto was first performed in 1811, though Beethoven was already too deaf to participate as soloist. With numerous opportunities for virtuosic display in this piece, the concerto's movements might almost be seen as tremendously expanded and lavishly orchestrated piano etudes, as each movement gives particular emphasis to a different facet of the player's technique: brilliant arpeggios in the first movement, the "Alberti" accompaniment figure of the slow movement and rapid scales in the finale.

Written in 1808, the first eight notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, op. 67) may be the most identifiable bits of classical music, at least in Western popular culture. In fact, this famous opening is noteworthy for its tonal ambiguity: G--G--G--E-flat. Quite apart from harmonic considerations, the rhythm of this motif establishes the breathless tone of the movement, and the first theme is made up solely of the incessant repetition of this famous rhythm (allegedly described by Beethoven as "fate knocking at the door").

The Department of Music also features a free concert of piano quartets by Mozart and Franz Anton Hoffmeister on Feb. 25 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall.

Cornell doctoral candidate and violist Thomas Irvine and guest musicians violinist Boel Gidholm, cellist Christopher Haritatos and fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout will open with Mozart's Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493, followed by Hoffmeister's Piano Quartet No. 2. The second half of the program is devoted to Mozart's Quartet in G Minor, K. 478.