National Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy Center & Gianandrea Noseda - Beethoven: Symphonies Nos 6 & 8 (2023)

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National Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy Center & Gianandrea Noseda - Beethoven: Symphonies Nos 6 & 8 (2023)

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The National Symphony Orchestra looks forward to releasing Beethoven’s remaining symphonies over the course of 2023 and 2024. The cover designs for this cycle feature the work of Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence Mo Willems. Inspired by the genius of Ludwig van Beethoven, Willems created a series of large-scale abstractions influenced by each of the composer’s nine symphonies.

Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, “Pastoral” (1808):

Many musicians and writers on music in the 18th century were preoccupied with music’s expressive and representative powers. Time and again, composers attempted to demonstrate that music was able, even without the help of words, to depict specific feelings and emotions, and even to narrate a sequence of events. One Justin Heinrich Knecht advertised his 1784 symphony, Musical Portrait of Nature, in a music journal on the very same page on which the notice for the 14-year-old Beethoven’s first published works (three piano sonatas) appeared. Knecht’s program, with its shepherds, streams, birds, thunderstorm, and clearing of the sky, is so similar to what Beethoven would have in his “Pastoral” that it is almost certain Beethoven knew Knecht’s work. Beethoven not only loved nature but, as many of his friends attested, worshipped it. Haydn and Mozart were not known for roaming the Austrian countryside; Beethoven, for his part, spent long and happy hours in the woods. He often retreated from Vienna to outlying areas where he admired Nature with a capital N as a true spiritual child of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”) movement. …

Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 (1812):

At first sight, one might think that Beethoven took a step back after completing his fiery and, at the time, super-modern Seventh Symphony, and wrote a companion piece in the style of his elders, Haydn and Mozart. That is, at least, the impression one gets from reading many earlier commentaries. Yet, it is clear that there is not a single measure in this piece that could have been written 20 years earlier, even by Beethoven. One should not be misled by the relative brevity of the Eighth, or by the fact that it contains a minuet, an older type of middle movement than the scherzo Beethoven had been more recently cultivating. In almost every respect—the variety of the harmonies, the richness of the orchestration, the individuality of the formal design—the symphony is anything but backward-looking. Beethoven did seem to revisit the world of his late teacher Joseph Haydn, but he did so without giving up the stylistic accomplishments of his mature years. The result was a real tour de force that Beethoven was justifiably proud of: he told his student Carl Czerny that he considered the Eighth Symphony a “better” work than the Seventh. …

“Beethoven’s symphonies have moved millions of people. One evening, at a concert almost 250 years after his birth, Beethoven’s work moved me to paint them. The idea of creating art specifically to view while listening to Beethoven’s symphonies, compelled me to spend a year researching, listening, and painting. The result is nine abstractions, a visual art piece for each symphony, rendered in panels, whose sizes represent the lengths of each movement. Through this project, I got to know Beethoven in a new way. When you listen to a symphony you are invited to a dialogue with its creator. I had the opportunity to see his technique change over his career and to feel the journey of his musical notes. I hope these abstractions will spark something in you, as a listener and a viewer. Maybe you’ll even respond to Beethoven with your own art!” (Mo Willems)