Description
Beethoven: Overtures – Egmont, Coriolanus, Leonora No. 3, Fidelio & more – Slovak Philharmonic, Naxos (CD)
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Product Details
- UPC: 4891030500723
- Catalogue Number: 8.550072
- Brand/Label: Naxos
- Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
- Ensemble: Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
- Conductor: Stephen Gunzenhauser
- Release Year: 1988 (recorded 4–9 July 1987)
- Genre: Classical – Orchestral/Overture
- Country of Producing: Germany
Product Features
- Format: Audio CD, DDD (fully digital recording)
- Total playing time: 59:18
- Cover artwork: The Prisoner's Dream, painting by Moritz von Schwind
Overview
This is a genuinely useful single-disc survey of Beethoven's overture writing, spanning both his single completed opera and a string of incidental-music and occasional works. Leonora No. 3 is the clear centerpiece — technically an overture to Fidelio, but so large in scale and dramatic ambition that Beethoven eventually replaced it with a shorter, more conventional Fidelio overture (also included here) because it essentially pre-empted the opera's own drama. Egmont and Coriolanus carry real theatrical weight despite being written for plays rather than operas, both drawing on Beethoven's gift for compressing an entire dramatic arc into a single concert overture. The disc rounds out with the lighter Creatures of Prometheus, the occasional-piece Ruins of Athens and Consecration of the House, giving a genuinely broad picture of how Beethoven approached the overture form across different contexts and decades. The Slovak Philharmonic under Stephen Gunzenhauser, recorded back in 1987 at the orchestra's own concert hall, brings good weight to the bigger works without losing clarity in the more compact pieces. A solid, well-programmed reference disc for Beethoven's overture output as a whole.
Interesting Facts
- Leonora No. 3 was originally intended as the overture to Fidelio, but its scale and dramatic completeness were considered to overshadow the opera itself, leading Beethoven to write a shorter, more conventional Fidelio overture instead — both are included on this disc.
- Coriolanus was written for a play by Heinrich Joseph von Collin, not for Shakespeare's version of the same story.
- Egmont was composed as incidental music for Goethe's play of the same name, and the overture remains its most frequently performed section today.
- Consecration of the House was written for the reopening of Vienna's Theater in der Josefstadt, one of Beethoven's later occasional compositions.
- This recording was made in 1987 at the Slovak Philharmonic's own concert hall, among the earliest sessions in Naxos's catalogue.
Track Listing
- Fidelio – 6:17
- Creatures of Prometheus – 5:30
- Coriolanus – 8:26
- Ruins of Athens – 5:13
- Egmont – 8:22
- Consecration of the House – 11:08
- Leonora No. 3 – 14:22
Publishers
Naxos, part of the Naxos Music Group, recorded at the Concert Hall of the Slovak Philharmonic (producer Guenter Appenheimer, music notes Keith Anderson). Distributed by MVD Music and Video Distribution GmbH, Unterhaching/Munich, Germany.
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