Leonard Slatkin conducts Beethoven

Leonard Slatkin was appointed music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in September 2008. This season, he conducts the orchestra in a festival celebrating the master from Bonn. ""It seemed the right time for all of us at the DSO to immerse ourselves in this remarkable world [the world of Beethoven's music], and in turn, bring our audiences along for the journey," he says of this undertaking.

This concert features emblematic works from Beethoven's symphonic repertoire. It begins with the Egmont overture, a piece of incidental music composed in 1810 by a forty-year-old artist who was passionate about the work of his countryman Goethe, the icon of a budding Romanticism, and a fervent defender of human liberty. While the whole work is seldom performed in concert, its overture is on the contrary a favourite piece among conductors. Within it lies all the fervour of a man who was still young at the time of writing, as well as the seeds of the last symphonic works of Beethoven. The concert carries on with two symphonies; the first is very classical in terms of its writing style. The sixth, the Pastoral Symphony, is charming, lyrical, at times light when it approaches a stream, at times thunderous when a storm breaks out. The Pastoral Symphony – described as a monument by André Gide, who drew inspiration from it for one of his novels – rather than a programmed work, is an expression of all Beethoven's feelings as he was about to become deaf, and found refuge only in the solitude of the countryside. This work was written at the same time as Egmont.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin have recorded several records together, all of them were released on the Naxos label.

This concert will not be available live on your mobile devices, but you will be able to catch it up later!

© Picture: Donald Dietz/Detroit Symphony Orchestra

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Live from Orchestra Hall webcast series is presented by the Ford Motor Company Fund and made possible by generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.