Beethoven: Pastorale

What does nature sound like in music? And what of the sensations that nature evokes in us? Music Director Fabien Gabel explores these questions with the Tonkunstler Orchestra – and has picked out two of the most beautiful examples.  «Sinfonia caracteristica» and «Sinfonia pastorella» were the original titles for Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sixth in its initial sketchs; «Erinnerung an das Landleben» («Memory of Country Life») was the work’s heading for its premiere; by the time it went to press the name was, finally, «Sinfonie Pastorale». A babbling brook, birdsong, dancing peasants, thunder and lightning followed by peace, inspired by stays in Nussdorf and Grinzing: And it’s not far from there to «Im Sommerwind» («In the Summer Wind»), written almost 100 years later, a late-Romantically beguiling piece of nature-magic by a 21-year-old Anton Webern. As fine as spider silk run the links between these two works, and on to «Threadsuns»*, a work for viola and orchestra from the pen of Donghoon Shin, a South Korean composer born in 1983. Amihai Grosz, solo violist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, helps realise this delicate lament, whose title is a reference to a famous poem by Paul Celan.

*Piece commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker, Minnesota Orchestra, Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra and the Tonkunstler Orchestra.

Austrian premiere on 14 March 2026 in the Musikverein Wien.