Le Concert Olympique

In 2027 it is 200 years since Ludwig van Beethoven died. During a three-year concert tour, conductor Jan Caeyers and the star American pianist Kit Armstrong perform Beethoven's 27 most important concert works in all 27 European countries by 2027, the major Beethoven year. In this concert Jan Caeyers illustrates how Beethoven overcame his disastrous mental breakdown of 1802. His Third Piano Concerto in C minor was composed at the beginning of this crisis period. It is the only Beethoven concerto in a minor key and is darkly orchestrated. The second movement has a ‘sacred and divine’ character, which is a first indication of the optimism that will eventually triumph and in the last movement overrule the dark colour of the concerto’s opening. The change of mood in the Third Piano Concerto continues in the Fourth Symphony (Opus 60). Beethoven composed this symphony in just a few months during the summer of 1806. Due to the speed with which it was written, it sounds very natural and spontaneous. It radiates so much energy that it is not inferior to the Eroica. The Fourth Symphony thus illustrates how Beethoven's new optimism is nevertheless often inextricably linked to seriousness and depth. As with all the concerts in the Beethoven27 project, Kit Armstrong opens the evening with a Prelude and Fugue from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Both works are in the same key as Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. This is not only a reference to the significance this iconic keyboard music had for Beethoven, but also serves as an opening ritual for the players and audience to help adopt the right frame of mind. Kit Armstrong is considered one of the leading pianists of our time. Like Beethoven, he is both a piano virtuoso who has performed with the world's most prominent orchestras, and a prolific composer, having written over seventy works by the age of thirty. > Johann Sebastian Bach, Prelude and Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 871 > Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 3, Op.37 > Ludwig van Beethoven, Andante favori, WoO 57 > Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 4, Op. 60