Beethoven's 'Coriolan' overture occupies a very specific place among his works. It is the only major piece of Beethoven that ends tragically.
It is superfluous to say Beethoven is not superficial - to put it very mildly. He encapsulates intense struggle, hardship, force, energy, effort, but he is determinedly optimistic. Victory comes only as a result of great effort but it comes - this combination being one of the reasons he has been the most popular of all composers. Beethoven was indeed the last classical composer of the first rank to have an unequivocally optimistic view of the world in the last analysis – later Mendelssohn was also optimistic but he is precisely not a composer of the very first rank. It is merely necessary to compare music being composed by Schubert during the last years of Beethoven’s life to see the comparison.
Perhaps for that reason Beethoven’s Coriolan poses particular problems of interpretation that only the greatest conductors are capable of solving. Outstanding recorded successes for me are Carlos Kleiber (on DVD), Konwitschny, and Klemperer. But Furtwangler’s 1943 recording occupies a place among the pantheon of the greatest recordings of anything. The extraordinary force and violence of the interpretation, combined with Furtwangler’s typical sustaining of the full value of notes, gives the impression of someone implacably crushed. Overwhelming.
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Interesting point on Beethoven's optimism. I think that we need to examine the times to understand this. Beethoven was formed during the period of the French Revolution: a hugely progressive time. Thus Wordsworth famously said "bliss 'twas in that dawn to be alive".
When Napoleon was defeated, reaction asserted itself and drove back the revolution, reinstating the monarchy in France. Coupled with this is the commercialising effect of capitalism upon art, which increased as capitalism grew stronger. The result was alienation among artists.
By 1848, it is virtually impossible to find an artist who actively celebrates the bourgeois values that caused Beethoven such optimism.
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