Ottavio Dantone

A look at the past without neglecting the present: Caroline Shaw’s Intermezzo of 2011 draws on Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 77 No. 2, playing with 18th-century forms. The music, however, pushes “beyond,” as explained by the American composer, singer, and violinist, who in 2013 became the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. “Poor are the musicians who always use the same old sounds, posterity will forget them. Méhul is certainly not among them, he is in every respect the first Romantic composer!” observed the Marquis de Condorcet in 1793 in the Chronique de Paris. Étienne-Nicolas Méhul, whose First Symphony was performed on March 12, 1809, built a career with his revolutionary music and became one of the most successful stage composers in France. In 1801 and 1802, Beethoven, a supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution and an admirer of Méhul, wrote his Second Symphony and overturned listeners’ expectations. “We are used to the works of Haydn and Mozart,” commented a reviewer as late as 1811, adding that it was hardly surprising “if these strange products of Beethoven, so distant from the usual music, generally fail to make an impression on the listener.”