Conducted by Clifton Jones
Beethoven's Overture and incidental music to Goethe's 'Egmont' were completed in 1810, and therefore represent the composer at the height of his powers. As a piece of dramatic writing in terms of ' pure ' music, and for fertility of invention and imaginative treatment, this overture has few, if any, equals outside perhaps one or two other similar works by Beethoven himself.
Indeed, Beethoven's music perfectly expresses Motley's description of Egmont in his 'Rise of the Dutch Republic': 'terrible and sudden .in wrath - a splendid soldier, whose evil star destined him to tread, as a politician, a dark and dangerous path, in which not even genius, caution, and integrity could ensure success, but in which rashness, alternating with hesitation, could not fail to bring ruin'. The music also depicts the final tragedy of Egmont when be meets death on the scaffold.