The composer's confrontation with Napoleon? For this characteristic does not apply at all to Beethoven's early piano or chamber music, nor to the other classics or even older music. If one approaches his Fifth Piano Concerto with an open mind, one discovers lyricism and unwieldiness, one finds breaks and encounters questions.Sibelius' Fifth in E-flat major also defies clear classification as heroic. The first movement appears whirling and circling, the scherzo brilliant, the third songlike, the last movement abrupt. Perhaps we should better say goodbye to key prejudices and experience music anew?a very ambivalent hero is also the Goethean figure of Faust. An early portrait of Faust is drawn by the overture of Emilie Mayer, whose important compositional oeuvre has found its way back into the repertoire with increasing frequency since the 200th anniversary of her birth in 2012.
