# Beethoven: Rarely Heard Symphonic Adagio



## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

If someone were to say there was a newly-discovered Symphonic Adagio composed by Beethoven in 1802 around the time of his Symphonies 2 & 3 and the Piano Concerto 3, there would be world-wide interest and a rush to record. His Christus am Olberge (Christ on the Mount of Olives) is rarely heard or played these days, but even though this oratorio is overall not one of his best works, the 6+ minute orchestral introduction is the exception.

It is vintage early Beethoven and could easily be thought of as a missing Adagio for one of his symphonies. IMO, it anticipates some of his music that was soon to come. For instance, you can hear use of the wind instruments typical of his early symphonies, the drama soon to come in the Eroica and the repeated Bass drum refrain that would be used to open the Violin Concerto (1806).


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

It would be an interesting April Fool's joke for a classical station to really build up that a long-lost adagio was just found and then finally play this. A ton of people would be glued to their radios who would otherwise ignore it.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I have always found intriguing (amazing?) the things you find in early Beethoven, the passages that presage things that preoccupied him throughout his life. He was a compulsive experimenter, and seldom needed more than two attempts to get something right (those timpani beats, for instance). And never more than three. We tend to denigrate the works with said experiments that didn't quite work (ones that Brahms would likely have destroyed unpublished.) Beethoven just moved on, tried again, and got it right.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I think the Hallelujah fugue really shows Beethoven's admiration for Handel. 
But anyway, among Beethoven's lesser known orchestral works, I find Egmont overture to be the most underrated.






Speaking of "experimental" orchestral adagios, the eerie chromaticism of the string passages in Mozart Maurerische Trauermusik (1785) anticipates his Requiem (1791), specifically the ending of Hostias.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

hammeredklavier said:


> I think the Hallelujah fugue really shows Beethoven's admiration for Handel.
> But anyway, among Beethoven's lesser known orchestral works, I find Egmont overture to be the most underrated.


I'll add to the list of underrated lesser known works the Consecration of the House overture. Love the opening theme and especially the regal repeat at 1:17. Unfortunately, he never restates that theme for the rest of the work.


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