LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN / CHRISTOPH ESCHENBACH / HANS WERNER HENZE / THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA - BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 IN C MINOR

Ludwig van Beethoven (16 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German pianist and composer of the transitional period between the late Classical and early Romantic eras. He is often regarded as one of the most brilliant, prolific and influential composers of all time. Beethoven is widely regarded as a master of musical construction, sometimes sketching the architecture of a movement before he had decided upon the subject matter. He was one of the first composers to systematically and consistently use interlocking thematic devices, or 'germ-motives', to achieve unity between movements in long compositions. (Some insight into the meaning of the germ-motive device is given at the end of this bio.) Equally remarkable was his use of source-motives', which recurred in many different compositions and lent some unity to his life’s work. He made innovations in almost every form of music he touched. For example, he diversified even the well-crystallised form of the rondo, making it more elastic and spacious, which brought it closer to sonata form. He was mostly inspired by the natural course of nature, and liked to write songs describing nature. Beethoven composed in a great variety of genres, including symphonies, concerti, piano sonatas, other instrumental sonatas (including for violin), string quartets and other chamber music, masses, lieder, and one opera. Beethoven's compositional career is usually divided into Early, Middle, and Late periods: In the Early (Classical) period, he is seen as emulating his great predecessors Haydn and Mozart, while concurrently exploring new directions and gradually expanding the scope and ambition of his work. Some important pieces from the Early period are the first and second symphonies, the first six string quartets, the first three piano concertos, and the first twenty piano sonatas, including the famous "Pathétique" and "Moonlight" sonatas. The Middle (Heroic) period began shortly after Beethoven's personal crisis centering around his encroaching deafness. The period is noted for large-scale works expressing heroism and struggle; these include many of the most famous works of classical music. Middle period works include six symphonies (numbers 3 to 8), the fourth and fifth piano concertos, the triple concerto and violin concerto, five string quartets (numbers 7 to 11), the next seven piano sonatas (including the "Waldstein" and the "Appassionata"), and Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio. Beethoven's Late (Romantic) period began around 1816. The Late-period works are characterised by intellectual depth, intense and highly personal expression, and formal innovation (for example, the Op. 131 string quartet has seven linked movements, and the Ninth Symphony adds choral forces to the orchestra in the last movement). Works of this period also include the Missa Solemnis, the last five string quartets, and the last five piano sonatas. Deconstructing the sonata form, both in the overall schema (movements, tempos) and in the micro-form, Beethoven began to use germinal ideas propelling the whole melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic progression. In the first quartet of the group (E flat major, Op.127 – February 1825), the Adagio has five variations (in this case, a source-theme becomes the backbone of the tempo). That same year, in July, Quartet in A minor, Op.132, features a first movement with the traditional two themes, but without contrast; they display and disseminate sub-sections and ‘germs’ in a circular frame, interlocking with each other. Beethoven's germ-motive is like a Bach choral, summoning the other voices around itself. The last quartet, Op. 135 in F major, was composed in a downplayed form, going back to a more traditional four-tempo structure. But internally one finds the same frozen micro-structure: the first movement is harmonically ambiguous, whereas the scherzo sounds like Bartók, and in the finale, the canon ‘Es muss sein’ plays a joyful role. A terrible grave comes in afterward, to dissolve into a soft pizzicato: adieu music, adieu life . It was never heard by the now deaf Beethoven, and he died shortly afterward. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Christoph Eschenbach (born February 20, 1940 in Breslau, Germany (today Wrocław, Poland) is a noted pianist and conductor. Orphaned by World War II, he won numerous first-place piano competition prizes. In 1964 he made his first recording (of Mozart) for Deutsche Grammophon and signed a contract with the label. In 1981, Eschenbach became principal guest conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and was chief conductor from 1982-86. Other posts include music director of the Houston (1988-99); chief conductor of the Hamburg NDR Symphony (1998-2004); and music director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1994-2003). He has made numerous recordings both as piano soloist and conductor. Since 2000, Eschenbach has been the Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris. In 2003, he became the Music Director of The Philadelphia Orchestra, which was a controversial appointment because at the time of the announcement, January 2001, Eschenbach had not conducted the orchestra in over 4 years and there was a perceived lack of personal chemistry between him and the musicians prior to the appointment. In October 2006, the Orchestra announced that Eschenbach will conclude his tenure in Philadelphia at the close of the 2007-2008 season. In the weeks prior to his departure, Philadelphia Inquirer music critics Peter Dobrin and David Patrick Stearns debated whether or not he should be retained, with Dobrin suggesting that Eschenbach should move on and Stearns arguing that Eschenbach should remain. Other harsh criticism of Eschenbach's tenure in Philadelphia has been aired. He is credited with helping and supporting talented young musicians in their career development including soprano Renée Fleming, pianists Tzimon Barto and Lang Lang, and soprano Marisol Montalvo. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Hans Werner Henze (born in Gütersloh, Westphalia, 1 July 1926, died in Dresden, 27 October 2012) was a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life". His music is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition. Henze was also known for his political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his leftist politics and homosexuality. He lived more recently in the village of Marino in the central Italian region of Lazio, and in his final years still traveled extensively, in particular to Britain and Germany, as part of his work. An avowed Marxist and member of the Communist Party of Italy, Henze produced compositions honoring Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. The librettist of his requiem for Che Guevara, titled Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of Medusa), was among several people arrested at the 1968 Hamburg premiere in the riot that followed the placing of a red flag on the stage. Henze spent a year teaching in Cuba, though he later became disillusioned with Castro. Henze began composing at the age of twelve. He studied at the Brunswick State Music School and, after military service, at the Institute for Church Music in Heidelberg and with Wolfgang Fortner. He attended the early Darmstadt International Summer Schools for New Music, where he met René Leibowitz, studying serial technique with him both there and in Paris. Of Henze's huge catalogue of works the earliest acknowledged date from 1946: the Kammerkonzert for piano, flute and strings, and the sonata for violin and piano. The following year brought the first string quartet, violin concerto and symphony. In 1948 he produced his first opera, the one-act 'Das Wundertheater', premiered in Heidelberg, and in 1949 his first acknowledged ballet, 'Ballett-Variationen'. His first full-scale opera, 'Boulevard Solitude', an updating of the Manon Lescaut story, was successfully launched in Hanover in 1952, but a year later Henze abandoned postwar German society to settle in Italy. His next opera, 'König Hirsch', and a whole series of pieces reflect the warming influence on him of the Italian environment. He memorably described himself as 'a north German contrapuntal temperament projected into the arioso south'; and the modernist, Schoenbergian and Stravinskyan influences of his earlier work now submitted to the tender sway of a sensuous lyricism clearly evident in the ballet 'Ondine', the 'Fünf neapolitanische Lieder' for baritone and chamber orchestra, the 'Nachtstücke und Arien' for soprano and large orchestra. To this rich synthesis was added a more austere classical strain in works such as 'Cantata della fiaba estrema' for soprano, chamber chorus and instruments, or 'Ariosi' for soprano, violin and orchestra; while a constructivistic approach was brought to bear on such pieces as 'Antifone' for solo strings, wind and percussion, the cantata 'Novae de infinito laudes', and the Kleist-based opera 'Der Prinz von Homburg'. Henze's operatic career reached a pitch of boldness and acclaim with 'The Bassarids', a two-hour single act conceived as a four-movement symphony, premiered in Salzburg in 1966; while his 45-minute second piano concerto of 1967 was a peak of his more abstract writing. But with the oratorio 'Das Floss der Medusa', and more conspicuously the 'Versuch über Schweine' for baritone-Sprechgesang and orchestra, both of the following year, and the exuberant, aleatory sixth symphony of 1969, a complete change came over Henze's work. Political protest, deep-dyed into the very fabric of the music - and indicated by his periods of residence in Cuba - marks his output of the 1970s, as attested by the revolutionary 'recital for four musicians' of El Cimarrón, followed by a concerto for viola and small orchestra, entitled 'Compases', the quasi-theatrical second violin concerto, and the 'actions for music' 'We come to the River', a stage work to a libretto by Edward Bond. Since the appearance of this work, first performed at Covent Garden in 1976, the political ferment of Henze's creativity has tended to subside. Revolutionary ideals invariably lead to disillusion; but he does count the foundation that same year of the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte - a people's arts festival - in the Tuscan town of Montepulciano as 'one of my few political successes'. Subsequent stage works include two other Bond collaborations, however: the comic parable of 'The English Cat' and the ballet 'Orpheus'; and if in the most recent two, 'Das verratene Meer' and 'Venus und Adonis', both to a libretto by Hans-Ulrich Treichel, attention is focused on personal and psychological experience - as it also is in the seventh symphony or the instrumental (wordless) 'Requiem' - the cantata-like Symphony No 9, 'dedicated to the heroes and martyrs of German antifascism', is there to remind us that vehement political protest still looms large in Henze's imagination. After the completion of his tenth symphony he started working on his last opera 'L’Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe' which was premiered at the Salzburg Festival in summer 2003 to great international acclaim. It resulted in many future productions, such as at Teatro Real Madrid, Opera de Lyon, Teatro Carlo Fenice Genoa, and Hamburgische Staatsoper. He has received innumerable honours and was the first composer-in-residence of the Berlin Philharmonic and has twice been composer-in-residence at the Tanglewood Festival. Recently he wroten an orchestral work for Radio France ('Nouvelles pour la Reine de Saba') and in December 2005 the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam premiered the new orchestral work 'Sebastian im Traum' to great acclaim. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the most well-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre. More recently, its principal conductors have included Pierre Monteux (1961–64), István Kertész (1965–68), André Previn (1968–79) and Claudio Abbado (1979–88). From 1988-1995, the American Michael Tilson Thomas took over, and in 1995, became principal guest conductor. Sir Colin Davis served as the LSO's Principal Conductor from 1995-2006, and in 2007 took the post of President of the orchestra. On 1 January 2007, Valery Gergiev became the LSO's Principal Conductor. Previn holds the title of Conductor Laureate. In 2006, Daniel Harding became the co-principal guest conductor alongside Tilson Thomas. The LSO became the first British orchestra to play overseas when it went to Paris in 1906. The LSO was due to sail on the RMS Titanic for a concert in New York in April 1912 but fortunately had to change the booking at the last minute. It was also the first to play in the United States, in 1912, and in 1973 it was the first to be invited to take part in the Salzburg Festival. It continues to make tours around the world. In 1956, the orchestra appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Man Who Knew Too Much, conducted by composer Bernard Herrmann in the climactic scene, filmed in Royal Albert Hall. In 1966, the London Symphony Chorus (LSC) was formed to complement the work of the LSO. With more than two hundred amateur singers, the LSC maintains a close association with the LSO; however it has developed an independent life, which allows it to partner other leading orchestras. The LSO has long been considered the most extroverted of the London orchestras. For most of its life it refused to allow women to become members, ostensibly on the grounds that women would affect the sound of the orchestra (there has been a similar controversy at the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra). One of the first women to join the orchestra was the oboist Evelyn Rothwell. There is an air of youthful high spirits to much of its music-making that is shown off in performances of such composers as Berlioz and Prokofiev. The LSO has often had internationally-known players as wind soloists, including such artists as James Galway (flute), Gervase de Peyer (clarinet), Roger Lord (oboe), Osian Ellis (harp), John Georgiadis (violin) and Barry Tuckwell (horn). Like most ensembles, the orchestra has a great ability to vary its sound, producing very different tone colours under such diverse conductors as Stokowski (with whom it made a series of memorable recordings), Adrian Boult, Jascha Horenstein, Georg Solti, André Previn, George Szell, Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, John Barbirolli, and Karl Böhm, who developed a close relationship with the orchestra late in his life. Böhm and Bernstein each held the title of LSO President in their later years. Clive Gillinson, a former cellist with the orchestra, served as the LSO's Managing Director from 1984 to 2005, and is widely credited with bringing great stability to the LSO's organisation after severe fiscal troubles. Since 2005, Kathryn McDowell is the Managing Director of the LSO. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.