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PROGRAM Easter. These works were the Eroica Sym- phony (Op. 55) and "a Concertant with full Orchestra for piano, cello, and violin." Breitkopf declined this proposal and Beethoven apparently did not finish the Triple Concerto in C major, Op. 56 until the summer of 1804. That August, the Com poser wrote his own letter to Breitkopf, urging the firm to accept the piece as "something really new." According to biographer Anton Schindler, Beethoven had written the Triple Concerto for his new piano pupil, Archduke Rudolf of Austria. Schindler also States that Rudolf premiered the piece with Violinist Carl Seider and cellist Anton Kraft in a private performance sometime during 1805-06. When the "Grand Concer to Concertant" reached print in 1807, how- ever, it bore a dedication to another of Beethoven's aristocratic supporters, Prince Franz Josf Lobkowitz. The first public performance took place in Leipzig in early 1808, with local soloists identified as "Miss Müller, Mr. Matthäi and Mr. Dozzauer" in an April magazine review. The critic faulted the concerto for its "unbridled richness of imagination" and its "bizarre association of conflicting elements," reporting that the Beethoven- loving Leipzig public had responded with only moderate enthusiasm. Indeed, the Triple Concerto has never achieved real popularity, and somecommentators judge it, with its odd instrumental forces, to be a fundamentally misconceived work. Sir Donald Francis Tovey, however, warmly defended the score. It was here in this "gigantic exercise work," said Tovey, that Beethoven first succeeded in writing an opening concerto-ritornello on truly classical lines—something that had eluded him in his first three Piano Concertos. The Triple Concerto's first movement ritornello is neither an improvisatory orchestral prelude nor an aborted sonata exposition, but, instead, an introduction of Mozartean pregnancy that prepares the soloists' entrance as a necessary and inevitable event. In a work where musical materials must sometimes receive four separate Statements—by violin, cello, piano, and Or chestra—the composer's great challenge is to prevent the narrative pace from lagging. Beethoven keeps his argument reasonably brisk in this ultra-spacious work by using pithy, formulaic themes, which bear con- tinual repetition better than melodies that assert strong individuality. "Beethoven's Triple Concerto," Tovey wrote, "is rather like Mozart's writings for wind band, in which Mozart actually goes the length of avoiding any theme which is not purely a formula." Beethoven draws colors of ex- ceptional richness and brilliance from his solo trio, giving special attention to the cello's capacity for intense high-register cantabile. Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17 (“Little Russian”) PETER 1LY1CH TCHAIKOVSKY Born May 7, 2 840, in Kamsko-Votkinsk Died November 6,1893, in St. Petersburg Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was accustomed to having his work condemned by critics of opposite persuasions. The Austro-Ger- manic musical establishment derided his work as provincial and unwholesomely ethnic (in Vienna, Eduard Hanslick even wrote of its "Russian stink"). At the same time, critics at home sometimes denounced Tchaikovsky's music as ethni- cally impoverished. This Charge was often leveled by the St. Petersburg nationalist composer-theorists: Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, and Cui. They would warn the Muscovite Com poser against selling his birthright for a mess of bland cosmopolitan pottage, sor- rowfully observing that Tchaikovsky's scores—insofar as they showed national traits at all—tended to be German rather than Russian. Predictably, the St. Petersburg group voiced no such objections to Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17, which, in all four movements, employs folk materials from "Little Russia," as Uk raine was then called. Completing the first version of this piece between June and November of 1872, Tchaikovsky brought it to a gathering at Rimsky-Korsakov's house and played the Finale on the piano. His nationalist colleagues were thrilled. Rimsk/s wife wept with joy and begged