-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K 219
-Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, „Eroica“, op. 55
Rainer Honeck violin
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Herbert Blomstedt
The Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major (also referred to as The Turkish) was written by Mozart in 1775. It was premiered that same year in Salzburg and we find it follows the typical fast-slow-fast musical structure.
Mozart composed the majority of his concertos for string instruments from 1773 to 1779, but the dating of these works is unclear. Analysis of the manuscripts has showed that all of the five violin concertos were redated several times. For example, the year of composition of the fifth concerto, marked 1775, was scratched out and replaced by 1780, and later changed again to 1775.
Mozart would not use the key of A major for a concerto again until the Piano Concerto No. 12 in A major, written during the autumn of 1782 in Vienna.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (also known as the Eroica – heroic in Italian) marks the arrival of the composers ‘middle-period,’ a series of large scale works of extreme emotional depth and structural rigor.
Beethoven wrote most of this symphony in late 1803 and completed it in early 1804. The symphony was premiered privately in the summer of 1804 in his patron Prince Lobkowitz’s castle Eisenberg, in Bohemia. The first public performance was given in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, in April 1805, with the composer, himself, conducting.
Originally the work was to be titled the “Bonaparte Symphony”. Legend has it, however, that the composer tore up the title page (holding the name Bonaparte) and later renamed the symphony Eroica when Napoleon crowned himself emperor, a move which deeply angered Beethoven.
Consisting of four movements: 1. Allegro con brio, 2. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai in C minor,
3. Scherzo: Allegro vivace, 4. Finale: Allegro molto.