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The best recordings of all Beethoven's Symphonies. We choose the very best sets of Beethoven symphonies. Discover the wonderful world of classical music, its composers, performers and more, with BBC Music.
Aug 4, 2016 · The top 10 is completed by Brahms’s Fourth Symphony (6th); Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (7th); Brahms’s First Symphony (8th); Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony (9th ); and Mahler’s...
- Symphony No.3 in E Flat, Op.55 – ‘Eroica’ Symphony
- Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 – ‘Choral’ Symphony
- Piano Sonata No.30 in E, Op.109
- String Quartet No.14 in C Sharp Minor, Op.131
- Piano Concerto No.5 in E Flat Major – ‘Emperor’ Concerto
- Symphony No.7 in A, Op.92
- Fidelio, Op.72
- Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
- Violin Concerto in D, Op.61
- Violin Sonata No.9, Op.47 – ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata
Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony completed in 1804, changed the musical world and is perhaps his defining work. At a stroke, orchestral music moves into another dimension, with a breadth of conception and emotional freight and range beyond anything previously dreamed of, the exact concision and classical symmetry of Mozart is left behind. It was origi...
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is one of Beethoven’s greatest compositions and one of the greatest symphonies ever composed. Symphony No. 9 is also known as the ‘Choral’ Symphony as its final movement features four vocal soloists and a chorus who sing a setting of Schiller’s poem An Die Freude (Ode To Joy). In the ‘Choral’ Symphony, Beethoven took the ...
Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas, the last three being a trilogy that belong together. The first of the three, No.30 in E, is one of the loveliest things he wrote, and is rather shorter than some of its predecessors, with a crystalline surface hiding great mysteries and intricacies of form and harmony. The short first two movements, the former emer...
The quartet is the most personal of compositions – it is music reduced to its absolute fundamentals with four players in quasi-spontaneous interaction. Beethoven’s last quartets are an extreme form, far from easy listening and incredibly intense, a kind of conversation with God, and this was the composer’s own favorite. It took Beethoven a lifetime...
The ‘Emperor’ Concerto was not so-named by Beethoven, but it has majesty to spare, with an expansive surface and overwhelmingly major-key feel (disguising much harmonic and thematic intensity) that makes it a great showpiece for the soloist. Starting with three chords that expand into a flourish of mini cadenzas, it ends with a triumphant, vaulting...
This is a sunny piece, and its premiere, at a concert for soldiers wounded at the 1813 Battle Of Hanau, was auspicious – it sounds like a celebration at the end of the nightmare of war. It is all momentum: there is no slow movement, but a half-playful, half-solemn Allegretto that brilliantly combines separate melodies and rhythms into a typically p...
Beethoven was no natural when it came to opera – too high-minded and too idealistic for the grubby world of drama and the shades of human motivation – but Fidelio, his only effort in the genre, has astonishing, blazing periods that more than compensate for its patchy moments. There are certain operatic scenes that never fail to tingle the scalp. To...
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is one of the most frequently performed symphonies and one of the best-known compositions in classical music. The symphony begins with a distinctive four-note opening motif that recurs in various forms throughout the work, which Beethoven allegedly described to his secretary and biographer Anton Schindler as “Fate knockin...
Written double-quick in the middle of an immensely creative period, the Violin Concerto in D, Beethoven’s most consistently lyrical work, allowed him to express pure musical serenity while his more intense side was coming out in compositions like the Coriolan Overture. It is really a 40-minute outpouring of untroubled melody, with moments of harmon...
We should remember that Beethoven’s composing life didn’t begin with Eroica – in fact, had he died in 1803, we would still consider him a great. This sonata was written a few months before the third symphony and, like many of the works around this period, shows a great, restless striving. The first movement battles between an anguished minor-key th...
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- Haydn—Beethoven’s mentor—thought the younger composer had a bit of an attitude, notoriously referring to his student as “the grand mogul” or “big shot.”
- The Haydn–Mozart–Beethoven connection climaxes in the Symphony No. 2. While the early masters codified the four-movement Classical symphony, Beethoven expanded their visions in this work.
- “Eroica” Beethoven admired Napoleon and dedicated his Symphony No. 3 to the French general. However, he furiously withdrew his dedication when Napoleon declared himself emperor, violently scratching Napoleon’s name from the dedication page with such vigor that he tore through the paper.
- Explore the nine symphonies and you’ll hear that the odd-numbered works are tempestuous while the even-numbered ones are more sedate. Consider Symphony No. 4.
Mar 27, 2020 · It’s Beethoven’s 250th birthday year, and concert halls all over the world were going to resound this spring — even more than usual — with his nine epochal symphonies.
Mar 3, 2023 · Although he wrote far fewer symphonies than his predecessors Mozart and Haydn, each of whom wrote dozens, every one of Beethoven's works is unique and special. Ranking these symphonies has proven to be a Herculean task, as any of these works could easily be placed as number one.
