Wellington's Victory - Premiere

Premiere

Fol­low­ing a major military vic­tory over Joseph Bonaparte's armies in Spain at the Battle of Vitoria on 21 June 1813, Beethoven’s friend Johann Mälzel talked the com­poser into writ­ing a com­po­si­tion com­mem­o­rat­ing this bat­tle which he could notate on his ‘mechan­i­cal orches­tra’: the panharmonicon. Beethoven, how­ever, wrote a com­po­si­tion for large band – an instru­men­ta­tion so large that Mälzel could not build a machine large enough to per­form the music. As an alter­na­tive plan, Beethoven rewrote the Siegess­in­fonie for orches­tra, added a first part and renamed the work, Wellington’s Vic­tory. In this form it was pre­miered in Vienna, together with the pre­mière of the Sym­phony No. 7 and a work per­formed by Mälzel’s mechan­i­cal trumpeter.

The piece was first performed in Vienna on 8 December 1813 on a concert programme to benefit Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau. Beethoven himself conducted the orchestra. Running about 15 minutes in duration, the piece was an immediate crowd-pleaser and met with much enthusiasm from early concertgoers. Also on the programme was the world premiere of his masterful and oft-performed Symphony No. 7.