Ludwig van Beethoven

Written while he was hiding his failing hearing, its dark introduction and turbulent fast tempo carry the anxiety of those years.

• The heavy, slow chords of the first movement's opening (grave) contrast sharply with the rushing fast section that follows, and this contrast creates the tension that runs through the entire work.
• The second movement's flowing, songlike melody (cantabile) is one of Beethoven's best-known tunes, with the right hand laying the melody over a left-hand accompaniment that ripples quietly beneath.
• In the third-movement rondo, the darkness of the first movement fades and a lightness returns, and how this flow is carried through is where performers part ways.
• If you listen closely for the moment the opening grave returns midway through, you can sense that the darkness has not entirely vanished.

Dedicated to Giulietta Guicciardi, his pupil and the woman he loved, the piece is suffused with the feeling of a love never fulfilled.

• True to its marking ‘quasi una fantasia,’ the first movement departs from strict sonata form, laying a restrained melody over gentle broken chords that unfold one note at a time (arpeggio).
• The nickname ‘Moonlight’ was given not by Beethoven but by a later critic; the music itself is far more intimate and dark in character.
• The third movement, ‘Presto agitato,’ erupts in a storm that is the very opposite of the first movement's stillness, and with its rapid fingerwork and fierce dynamics it is regarded even among performers as one of the most demanding pieces in the repertoire.
• The key to appreciating this work is to hear the extreme emotional shift from the first movement to the third as a single, unbroken arc.

Intended as a dedication to Napoleon, the work holds both disillusionment at his betrayal and a questioning of what a new kind of hero might be.

• The first movement is nearly twice as long as those of earlier symphonies, and with just two short chords at the outset it compresses the energy of the entire work.
• The second movement is a slow, heavy-footed piece evoking a funeral procession (funeral march), depicting the death and mourning of a hero.
• The dissonance that appears in the middle of the first movement's development section struck audiences of the day as radical, and even today how sharply a conductor brings out the tension of this passage marks a parting of interpretive ways.
• The passage in which three horns sound together produces a thick wind sonority rarely heard in symphonies until then, ringing out like the signal of a new era.

Written as his hearing was slipping away entirely, it distills into music the will to press on from darkness into light.

• The four-note ‘short-short-short-long’ rhythm that dominates the whole work later acquired the description ‘Fate knocking at the door,’ but this is an anecdote never confirmed as Beethoven's own words.
• The first movement weaves its entire fabric tightly from this single four-note motif, and there is real pleasure in following where the rhythm reappears in altered form.
• The passage from the third movement into the fourth runs on without a pause (attacca); a low, smoldering tension slowly swells until it bursts forth in the first C-major chord of the finale, bringing a sense of release.
• The trombones, heard for the first time in the fourth movement, were an unusual addition to the symphonic orchestra of the day, and they thicken the sense of triumph still further.

Premiered in the same year as the Fifth, this work lays bare his temperament, ever seeking solace in nature.

• Each movement bears a title such as ‘Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country’ or ‘Scene by the brook,’ so the composer himself made clear what he meant to depict.
• Near the end of the second movement, the flute, oboe and clarinet take turns imitating the calls of the nightingale, the quail and the cuckoo, and they ring out distinctly.
• The fourth movement, ‘Storm,’ is famous for its realistic painting: thunder rendered by the tremolo of the low strings, trembling in rapid repetition, and the timpani; lightning by sharp figures in the winds.
• Once the storm has passed, the pastoral melody that brings calm again in the fifth movement sounds like a hymn of thanksgiving to nature.

The story of a couple seeking to escape unjust imprisonment, through which he poured his convictions about freedom and justice into his only opera.

• Of the overtures he rewrote several times, the ‘Leonore Overture No. 3’ is also beloved as a concert piece in its own right, and it has a dramatic structure different from the overture to the final opera.
• ‘O welche Lust,’ in the Act I finale, is the scene in which the prisoners are briefly let out to sing together in the sunlight—a moment when long-suppressed feeling bursts forth.
• The trumpet call in the final scene, in which the heroine Leonore, disguised as a man, rescues her husband, has become a symbol heralding the moment of deliverance.

His last symphony, completed after he had lost his hearing entirely, proclaims in music the love of humanity found in Schiller's poem.

• The ‘Ode to Joy’ theme of the fourth movement begins in the low strings and spreads step by step through the whole orchestra, growing as it goes—and this very spreading sounds like a message widening from the individual to all humankind.
• Including vocal soloists and a chorus in a symphony was an unprecedented step at the time, and it greatly widened the possibilities of the symphony thereafter.
• The story goes that at the premiere Beethoven, completely deaf, kept standing without realizing the performance had ended, and only when a soloist turned him around did he see the audience's applause.
• The drop between the slow, meditative melody of the third movement and the explosive joy of the fourth lies at the heart of listening to this work.

A work distilling the intimate reflections of his last years, written when, worn out by the troubles over his nephew, he devoted himself to music alone.

• Its seven movements, played without a break (attacca), were a radical departure for the time, and the work's intent comes alive when it is heard as one long, unbroken flow.
• The first movement opens with a quiet, introspective fugue; Schubert, on hearing this work, is said to have marveled, ‘After this, what is left for us to write?’
• In the variation movement of the latter half, a simple theme branches out into variations of wholly different character, and among performers this passage is known to be especially difficult to hold together as an ensemble.
• The fierce close of the final movement stands in stark contrast to the contemplative movements before it as it brings the work to an end.