16 October 2025
Pia Bernauer
Weekly SpinOn: Freedom
Freedom takes many forms, and like so many aspects of life, it appears in music.
The four works in this playlist follow that idea: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture speaks of political struggle, Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 marks independence from the system of patronage as he began composing on his own terms. Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra breaks free from musical norms, and Massenet’s Méditation from Thaïs turns to the freedom of thought.
Track 1: Egmont Overture, Op. 84 – Ludwig van Beethoven
Few composers expressed the idea of freedom with such conviction as Beethoven. For him, independence was not an abstract principle but a lived experience — personal, artistic, and political. His music often mirrors the struggle between constraint and release, and nowhere is that more direct than in the Egmont Overture.
Lamoral von Egmond (1522–1568)
Beethoven wrote the piece in 1809 for Goethe’s play about Count Lamoral of Egmont, a 16th-century Flemish nobleman executed for resisting Spanish rule. Though loyal to the crown, Egmont opposed the persecution of Protestants in the Netherlands and became a symbol of political resistance after his death. Goethe’s tragedy portrays him as a man who dies for his beliefs yet whose spirit endures as the embodiment of freedom.
Beethoven composed the overture as part of a larger set of incidental music for a production of Goethe’s play at the Burgtheater in Vienna — ten pieces in total, including songs, entr’actes, and melodramas. He wrote it in 1809 and 1810, while Vienna was under French occupation, a time that heightened his sympathy for the fight against oppression. The overture served as the work’s dramatic introduction, condensing the story’s darkness and ultimate triumph into a single movement. It begins in tension and despair, then rises toward a brilliant conclusion that celebrates liberation through courage and conviction.
Karajan conducted the Egmont Overture throughout his career, from his early performances in the 1930s to his final Beethoven cycles in the 1980s. He recorded it three times for Deutsche Grammophon — in 1962, 1970 and 1983 — always with the Berlin Philharmonic. In a 1977 interview with the critic Joachim Kaiser, he spoke about Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, saying:
Although he referred to another work, this view helps explain his approach to Egmont as well — a score whose power lies in its continuous, organic progression from darkness to light.
This opening track represents political freedom — rebellion and resistance, whereas the next work turns to a different kind of independence: the composer freed from obligation to patron or court.
Track 2: Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K. 543 – IV. Finale (Allegro) – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
When Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 39 in the summer of 1788, he was no longer employed by a court or patron. After leaving Salzburg and his position under the Archbishop, he lived in Vienna as an independent composer — a rare and uncertain path at the time. Yet this freedom to compose without the constraints of patronage gave him complete control over his work. Without commissions or aristocratic obligations, he wrote purely for himself, and the last three symphonies, composed within only a few weeks, are often seen as the outcome of that artistic independence.
The Symphony No. 39 opens with a stately Adagio introduction that immediately sets it apart from his earlier works — a sign of Mozart’s growing freedom from expectation and formality. The fourth movement, marked Allegro, is written in sonata form and distinguished by its rhythmic drive and clarity of texture. The main theme is built from a simple ascending figure, developed through lively exchanges between winds and strings. Contrasts between forte and piano passages and frequent shifts of orchestral colour give the movement a buoyant, transparent character typical of Mozart’s late style.
Karajan recorded the symphony twice with the Berlin Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon, first in 1960 and again in 1982. He often performed it in concert as part of the final trilogy of symphonies (Nos. 39–41), describing them as “music that has everything — reason, order, and joy.” His interpretation is lean and balanced, revealing the precision and lightness that underline Mozart’s freedom from convention.
Track 3: Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116 – II. Giuoco delle coppie – Béla Bartók
After Mozart’s freedom from patronage, this next work turns to artistic independence — a composer breaking free from musical norms. Béla Bartók wrote his Concerto for Orchestra in 1943, during his exile in the United States. Ill and financially struggling, he had left Hungary the previous year, but the commission from Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony gave him a renewed sense of purpose. In this score, Bartók reinvented the orchestra itself, treating each instrumental group as an individual voice rather than part of a single mass — a striking declaration of creative freedom.
The second movement, Giuoco delle coppie (“Game of Pairs”), is one of the clearest expressions of that idea. Each pair of wind instruments plays in its own interval — bassoons in sixths, oboes in thirds, clarinets in sevenths, flutes in fifths, trumpets in seconds — creating five distinct duos, each with a unique colour and rhythm. A short drum fanfare separates the pairs like turns in a conversation. Bartók avoids traditional development; instead, he lets contrast and invention carry the form.
Karajan recorded the Concerto for Orchestra with the Berlin Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon in 1973. It was one of the few 20th-century works he performed regularly. The recording, made in Berlin’s Philharmonie, is noted for its precision of ensemble and the balance of instrumental detail, clearly defining each pair within the orchestral texture.
Track 4: Thaïs – Méditation – Jules Massenet
The final track turns to the most personal form of freedom — the freedom of thought. The Méditation is an instrumental interlude from Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs, first performed in Paris in 1894. The opera tells the story of a monk, Athanaël, who tries to convert the courtesan Thaïs from her life of pleasure to one of faith. Between the first and second scenes of the second act, the orchestra plays the Méditation: the moment when Thaïs begins to question her life and decide her future.
Thais, opera by Jules Massenet, Manuel Orazi
A courtesan is by definition not free — her body belongs to others, her position depends on them. Thought is her last refuge, the only realm untouched by power or circumstance. The title Méditation comes from the French word for reflection, derived from the Latin meditari — to think. In Massenet’s time, it meant contemplation rather than a spiritual exercise, though both ideas overlap here. In the opera, it marks the point where Thaïs begins to think independently, to reflect on her own life and the possibility of change.
Karajan returned to this piece several times in his career, recording it three times between 1954 and 1981. The version chosen here, with Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Berlin Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon, was made between November 1980 and January 1981 in the Philharmonie Berlin. Mutter was 17 years old, and it was among her first collaborations with Karajan. Placed at the end of this playlist, the work represents freedom reduced to its essence — what remains when everything else is lost.
— Pia Bernauer (Karajan Institute, Salzburg)
