Coriolanus Overture in C minor op. 62

The drama of Coriolanus is inspired by Caius Marcius, nicknamed Coriolanus for having conquered the ancient city of the Volscians, whom he joins, however, after falling victim to a plot against his election as Roman consul. His wife Volumnia and mother Veturia plead with him not to betray his country, and he, torn between honor and revenge, is assassinated by the Volscians. This is the version used by William Shakespeare, while that of playwright Heinrich Collin, a coeval of Beethoven, sees Coriolanus commit suicide because of the irreconcilable conflict of conscience between his word and his inability to go against Rome. It was thus the drama of the “Austrian Schiller,” as Collin was nicknamed, that inspired Beethoven to write this tight and intensely dramatic overture, capable of condensing into just seven minutes the psychology of a complex and tormented character, whom the music makes alive and present as one of our contemporaries.

Symphony No. 7 in A major op. 92

Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was born in a very fruitful period, between 1811 and 1812, and was first performed in Vienna in 1813, in a patriotic evening in support of soldiers wounded in the Battle of Hanau against Napoleonic troops. Despite the enormous success of another Beethoven composition featured in the evening, The Victory of Wellington, it was nonetheless the Allegretto of the Seventh that won the audience over, so much so that it had to be immediately repeated. The work, as a whole, struck contemporaries for its originality, considered by some even rhythmically excessive. However, in time, it was precisely those characteristics that were reevaluated, so much so that Richard Wagner called the Seventh “the apotheosis of dance,” capturing its hallmark: a continuous rhythmic energy that runs through all the movements and enacts a miraculous fusion between the listener’s body and mind.