Concert Review: The BPO Performs Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto

Also Napoleon, War Trauma, Finland, And A Medieval Nun

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, April 20, 2024. Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo. Conductor David Lockington with piano soloist Stewart Goodyear. Photos by Sara Heidinger, © Sara Heidinger (2024)

Setting: July 5, 1809, Vienna.

Napoleon’s First Empire is at its height but fighting on two fronts: a “peninsular war” on the Iberian Peninsula against Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, and a second front in Central Europe against Austria.

During the Battle of Wagram, Vienna was battered with a brutal, unrelenting artillery barrage. The stalwart Viennese citizens who remained in the great city during the siege included one Ludwig Van Beethoven who had abandoned his studio to take refuge in a cellar with his brother Carl, at one point covering his ears with pillows to protect his degenerating hearing.

The trauma of the shelling (and later occupation) of Vienna affected Beethoven deeply; he recalled “nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts,” admitting “it affected me body and soul.”

This famous canvas, commissioned in 1835 by Louis-Philippe for his Musée historique de Versailles, was painted by Horace Vernet (1789-1863) and featured in the 1836 salon. It still hangs in…