Flanders Symphony Orchestra

Music written for or about Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington marks this special concert. Lesueur’s grand music for Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor was a great success. He became head of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, and numbered both Berlioz and Gounod among his pupils.

Wellington’s Victory was extremely popular in Beethoven’s lifetime, and like Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture uses wellknown songs to symbolise the armies of the different countries. There follow two contrasting views of Napoleon.

Berlioz’s choral piece, commemorating the date that Napoleon died, sets a poem full of regret, while Schoenberg’s setting of Byron’s powerful poem, written in 1942 when another tyranny held sway over Europe, pours scorn on the idea of achieving ambition at the cost of other people’s lives. The concert ends with Beethoven’s fascinating piece, part piano concerto, part choral work, which prefigures the finale of the Ninth Symphony.