Leonskaja plays Beethoven
PROGRAMME NOTES
written by JASPER CROONEN
Felix Mendelssohn Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, Op. 27 (1828)
Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 (1800)
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Robert Schumann Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97 "Rheinische" (1850)
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12.02.2026 FLAGEY BRUSSELS
An oasis of calm, a glassy sea and a river cruise
Gentle calm and violent outbursts: that is what the three works on this programme have in common: Mendelssohn’s Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, and Schumann’s ‘Rhenish’ Third Symphony.
Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt
There is a clear line connecting the three composers. Schumann was to succeed Mendelssohn in 1844 as Kapellmeister in Leipzig—but ultimately missed out on that coveted post. And Mendelssohn, in turn, based his concert overture Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt on an earlier cantata by Beethoven.
In that cantata, the chorus—setting texts by Goethe—sings of two different states of mind of a skipper. Different indeed, because for an early nineteenth-century sailor, a calm sea and a prosperous voyage were anything but synonymous. A glassy surface meant a lack of wind, making it impossible for sailing ships to put to sea. Only after the invention of the steamship did a mirror-smooth ocean become desirable.
In the original text, fear and mistrust therefore resonate. The protagonist is troubled: ‘Keine Luft von keiner Seite! Todesstille fürchterlich’ (‘No air from any quarter! A dreadful, deathly calm!’). He is above all anxious. The exclamation marks only heighten his panic.
In Mendelssohn’s instrumental, orchestral interpretation, the composer seeks to translate that idea into sound. The opening section begins modestly, almost motionless, with strings that linger for a long time on the same pitch. ‘It hovers here and there and trembles, barely audible,’ the composer himself noted. ‘The whole moves slowly … with heavy boredom.’ Yet beneath that apparent listlessness, menace emerges from the brass and from a harmonic progression that drags itself forward, seeming never to resolve. Only in the second part does the orchestra burst forth in full force, jubilant and swift.
Hieroglyphs in the oasis
In his Third Piano Concerto, Beethoven likewise navigates between calm and excitement. The two outer movements are a grand 'Allegro con brio' and a incisive ‘Rondo. Allegro’. Between them lies, in the words of musicologist Herbert Glass, ‘an oasis of calm (…) with the cantabile breadth of the piano melody, accompanied by muted strings, after which the piano arpeggios curl around the theme, now taken up by strings and woodwinds.’ As with Mendelssohn, it is above all the restrained strings that lend the music its inward character.
With Beethoven, however, there is no fair wind as a counterbalance; here, calm is offset by virtuoso solo passages. The Third Piano Concerto is often seen as a turning point for the composer. It is the first work in this genre in which he dares to break free from Mozartian influences and to assert more clearly his own, more freely evolving compositional voice. He breaks with the strict structures of Classicism and repeatedly positions the concerto as a dazzling vehicle for the soloist.
A role Beethoven himself assumed at the première of the work in 1803, at least partly out of necessity. At that moment, the score was little more than a draft. ‘Nothing but empty pages,’ testified his student and page-turner Ignaz von Seyfried. ‘At most, here and there a few Egyptian hieroglyphs were scribbled, which I did not understand at all, but which served him as cues; for he played almost the entire solo part from memory, since, as so often, he had not had time to write everything down.’
An ode to the Rhineland
Like Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann also sets sail, though his voyage is of a different kind: not an excursion on the open sea, but a river cruise. Schumann’s Third Symphony, the ‘Rhenish’, was composed in 1850, shortly after his appointment as music director in Düsseldorf—one of the rare periods of stability and happiness in his life. This new professional recognition proved liberating. In just a few weeks, Schumann set down one of his most buoyant and energetic symphonies.
This marks a second point of contrast with Mendelssohn. Here there is less overt balancing between despair and release; Schumann remains cheerful and lively throughout the work. Slow movements, with designations such as ‘Sehr mässig’ and ‘Nicht schnell’, are of course no quick affairs, but the composer avoids an even more ponderous marking such as lento. Even the slow fourth movement is given a—albeit solemn—‘feierlich’ (festive) character. The indications for the outer movements are the most telling of all: twice Schumann calls for a performance that is ‘Lebhaft’: lively.
It is this overwhelming vitality that lingers, and through which the composer sought to capture his own impressions of the Rhineland, not least his very first visit to the then still unfinished Cologne Cathedral. That experience was the principal catalyst for writing the symphony; the very next day, the first ideas were already on paper.
Despite this tangible source of inspiration, the ‘Rhenish’ is not programme music. Schumann avoids literal musical depictions of scenes along the riverbanks. He was keenly afraid that his music might be reduced to a series of picturesque descriptions. What he did seek was to fix and reawaken the emotions he himself had felt along the river. ‘How compositions come into being matters little,’ Schumann himself said. ‘Composers often do not even know themselves. Just as often an external image leads us on, a musical motif in turn calls forth the next idea. The main thing is that good music emerges, music that can satisfy purely as music.’
That is undeniably the case three times over in this programme. For however maritime these compositions may seem, they can be fully appreciated even without sea legs.
