As close to Beethoven as it gets
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Ferdinand Ries and Franz Clement were the musicians closest to Beethoven. Ries, who knew Beethoven from Bonn, acted as his secretary before moving to London where he was active in the Philharmonic Society that commissioned Beethoven’s ninth symphony. Clement, for whom Beethoven composed his violin concerto, was displaced as concertmaster for the premiere of the ninth symphony. Although neither man achieved posterity, it is interesting to see how much of Beethoven rubbed off into their works….
Read on here.
And here.
En Francis ici.
Rachel Barton Pine made a fine recording of Franz Clement’s violin concerto — a work known to Beethoven from its premiere in Vienna in 1805. The following year saw the first performance of Beethoven’s own concerto — played by Clement. So at least in fiddle music, it’s likely that each composer “rubbed off” on the other.
There are also plenty of recordings of the music of Ferdinand Ries, many on cpo and Naxos, with five CDs devoted to his works for piano and orchestra. The Concerto in C sharp minor was recorded in 1971 by Unicorn (on vinyl, of course!) and it was a revelation – a powerful work with one foot in the late classical era and the other in the Romantic world of Hummel and Chopin.
He was a close friend of Beethoven for years (an amazing achievment in itself!) and I seem to remember hearing that he supervised the rehearals and first performance of the Eroica symphony; when he first heard those strident discords in the first movement, Ries shouted at the orchestra to stop as he thought there were misprints in the score! He also wrote a memoir of his recollections of Beethoven, whose music clearly influenced Ries’s own. Like Icarus, Ries may have flown too close to the sun, and that may have been his undoing. But his works are beyond mere ersatz Beethoven – they are impressive and worth hearing and enjoying.