Was Beethoven a Russian?

I just heard the Baltimore Symphony bookend Beethoven's Seventh Symphony with R. Strauss's Metamorphosis.

Nicely done.
We get to hear the angst-ridden romantic strings against that inspired and righteously famous second movement of Beethoven's. Just like an interior designer might add some yellow accessories to the room to bring out the bright spots of Monet's Waterlillies, the programmer of that concert wanted to bring out the luscious strings of Beethoven by adding the Strauss.



Let me take that metaphor one further and get you to listen to the Beethoven in a few different rooms against some different accessories and painted walls.

Listen Shostikovich's Fifth Symphony - if you can, go right to the 4:10 mark.
Listen to those strings - how the simple, brittle melody rides on this dark and shifty ostinato. Major to minor with no compunction.

Now Beethoven, second movement.

As a fantasia on this theme of the shiftiness between major and minor in the inner strings listen to Prokofiev.

Now, just like an interior designer has the power to color the way you view a classic painting, the curator of an art museum can really twist your perception of a painting the way he frames or even hangs it. Imagine Salome (below) hung against a red wall compared to how she would look against a dark green wall. Neither one is better or worse, but your eye would certainly reflect on different parts of the painting according to what solid color surrounds the piece. Your perception of the work would be totally different.



Listen to this famous energetic ostinato from Stravinsky. - if you can, skip to the :30 mark

This is a particularly Russian technique - to hammer out these beautiful big sonorities continuously and fit these tiny and beautiful melodies under, between and within. It's been compared to finding beautiful and jeweled trinkets within nested dolls.

Now the Beethoven, fourth movement.

Taken alone, no self-respecting music historian would call those repeated strong beats ostinatos but when I listen to it right next to the Stravinsky the continuous repeated motion blurs and sounds almost like a work from the mechanized age.

As an aside, listen to the section where it slows down at the 1:54 mark and then listen again to the opening of Shostikovich Five. This comparison brings out the Beethoven section in a completely different light. I definitely wouldn't hear the Beethoven in the same way if I listened to it in the context of Mendelssohn, Schubert, Haydn, etc.

The real trick in programming would be to make these mountings obvious. If it were an ANALOG concert we would probably put these individual movements right up against each other. (Rather than playing the whole Beethoven four movements, and then the whole Rite of Spring, and then the whole Shostikovich Five.) I think it would work better to put the Beethoven movements in between the movements of the other pieces, and play the Beethoven with a huge Russian string section - maybe even doubled winds. If you beef up the German in the middle it wouldn't be overpowered by the Russians surrounding it.

The contrast would be ear-grabbing and exciting.