Beethoven’s ‘10th’ on Pacific Symphony Agenda

Beethoven’s so-called “10th Symphony” has been added to the Pacific Symphony’s concerts on Feb. 1 and 2 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, according to music director Keith Clark. Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony is dropped from the schedule to accommodate the 15-minute Beethoven work, reconstructed by a Scottish professor from desultory jottings and sketches.

The reconstruction, which has generally raised ho-hum responses from critics and audiences, is by Barry Cooper, professor of music at the University of Aberdeen.

Cooper, 39, worked from unidentified musical fragments Beethoven jotted down in his sketchbooks between 1812 and 1825 for a proposed second work for the Philharmonic Society of London, which had commissioned two new symphonies.

One of these was the Ninth Symphony. However, Beethoven died before he had accumulated much more than a series of sketches for the other work, although he acknowledged in a letter to the society written eight days before his death in 1827 that “sketches” for a 10th Symphony were “already in my desk.”

Scholars, however, have generally considered these remarks less likely a statement of fact than an oblique expression of thanks for the 100 that the society forwarded to him to ease his final days.

After his death, Beethoven’s sketchbooks were ransacked for souvenirs of his handwriting and widely distributed, not to be re-collected, in so far as was possible, until late in the 19th-Century. Pages remain missing.

Cooper’s reconstruction received its premiere by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under the direction of Walter Weller on Oct. 18. New York heard it on Oct. 23 by conductor Jose Serebrier and the American Symphony Orchestra.

The West Coast heard the work for the first time in November by the San Jose Symphony under music director George Cleve.

A recording also is available by the London Symphony conducted by Wyn Morris.