Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)

01-11 ‘Fidelio’
(arranged for winds by Wenzel Sedlak, c.1815)
Overture
Duet: “Es wird ja nichts Wichtiges sein"
Aria: “O wär ich schon mit dir vereint”
Quartet: “Mir ist so wunderbar"
Aria: “Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben"
Marsch
Chor der Gefangenen: “O welche Lust, in freier Luft"
Aria: “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen"
Trio: “Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten” Duet: “O namen, namenlose Freude”

12-15 Sextett in E-flat (op. 71)

16 Rondino in E-flat (WoO 25)

Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, long considered a failed attempt at the genre, was at the time of its inception nonetheless sufficiently popular to merit the creation of a series of arrangements. Among these can be found a version for winds, or Harmonie, which might today help serve to provide a measure of success where it is most certainly due. The first version of the opera, Leonore, had its unsuccessful premiere in 1805. Beethoven revised the work twice, and eventually renamed it Fidelio, which was staged in 1814. The adaptation for winds here is based on the latest version. One could be said to have in the wind arrangement the best of both worlds; finely wrought music without the encumbrance of a staged production. The music, taken aria by aria, figures among the most inspired of Beethoven’s works. With regard to the version for winds –created by Wenzel Sedlak in 1815 for the publishing house Artaria and Co.– it is worth noting that the composer himself clearly approved of the idea of such arrangements.

After Mozart’s Gran Partitta, after Die Zauberflöte, after an incursion into the Bohemian world of Franz Krommer, and now with Fidelio, Hoeprich’s ensemble Nachtmusique has no doubt become the world’s leading ambassador of the Harmoniemusik, that exquisite genre that brings back into our concert halls and homes the spirit of early 19th-century Vienna.