Pastorale

Fidelio is the only opera by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven struggled to produce an appropriate overture for Fidelio, and ultimately went through four versions. This somewhat lighter overture seems to work best of the four as a start to the opera.

Appalachian Spring depicts the day of a wedding celebration at a Pennsylvania farmhouse in the early 20th Century. It opens at dawn and concludes as serenely as it began, ending the day with the same chords with which dawn was evoked.

A lover of nature, Beethoven spent a great deal of time on walks in the country. He said that the Sixth Symphony is “more the expression of feeling than painting.” It is one of Beethoven’s few works containing explicitly programmatic content.