Bachtrack top ten: Ludwig van Beethoven

“Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.” For much of his later life, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), one of the greatest composers of all time, was profoundly deaf, a fact that makes his achievements all the more remarkable. Beethoven straddled the Classical and Romantic periods, pushing the boundaries far beyond what Haydn and Mozart had accomplished. He was the first composer to break free from reliance on court or church patronage, forging a career via the sale and publication of his works.

Beethoven was inspired by great literature – Goethe and Schiller – and the ideals of the French Revolution, writing music that conveyed the power of the human spirit and a philosophy of life largely without recourse to words. The scale of his ambition was huge. Consider the the benefit concert he conducted at the Theater an der Wien in 1808, which saw the premieres of the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the Choral Fantasia in one (long) evening.

It was in 1802, while composing his Second Symphony in Heiligenstadt – then in the countryside outside Vienna – that Beethoven’s encroaching deafness became more pronounced, causing him a great deal of anguish. He wrote a suicidal letter to his brothers – the Heiligenstadt Testament – a letter that he never sent. Beethoven persevered, although his days as a virtuoso pianist ended. It was not until around 1819 that he went completely deaf, which meant he relied on conversation books for communication.

His late works – particularly the late piano sonatas and string quartets – were misunderstood and considered strange as the reclusive Beethoven explored new musical paths. His achievements were huge; he composed the greatest symphony cycle ever, as well as string quartets, piano sonatas and concertos which all broke new ground. The only area in which he did not succeed was the field of opera, his one effort – Leonore, revised as Fidelio – an odd, unbalanced work. Any top ten playlist merely scratches the surface – at least 30 works could be in contention here...

1Symphony no. 3 in E flat major, “Eroica”, Op.55

The greatest of Beethoven’s symphony? Where the first two followed a Haydnesque model and scale, the Third treads revolutionary new ground. In 1801, Beethoven wrote in his diary “I am not satisfied with my works up to the present time. From today I mean to take a new road.” Originally, the Eroica was going to be dedicated to Napoleon, whose values of liberty and brotherhood Beethoven shared, but when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in 1804, Beethoven flew into a rage and scratched out the dedication from the score. “He is nothing but an ordinary mortal! He will trample all the rights of men under foot to indulge his ambition…”

This performance by the Bundesjugendorchester includes a reading – and signing – of the Heiligenstadt Testament before the Marcia funebre.

2Symphony no. 5 in C minor, Op.67

The Fifth begins with four notes that everyone will recognise. The motif of Fate “knocking at the door” jolts the audience to attention like a thunderclap and dominates the first movement, in the middle of which comes a plangent oboe cadenza. The second movement is a set of variations on two themes, followed by a Scherzo which segues into the finale via an incredible transition over insistent timpani before triumphant C major bursts through the clouds. The Fifth is an heroic struggle which, for Hector Berlioz, “emanates directly and solely from the genius of Beethoven.”

3Piano Concerto no. 1 in C major, Op.15

If Beethoven’s early symphonies were influenced by Haydn, the piano concertos were written under the shadow of Mozart. All five are great – the “Emperor” Fifth is perhaps the most popular, but I’ve a real soft spot for the First (the second to be composed, the first to be published). He had several Mozart concertos in his own repertoire and in his C major concerto, like Mozart's C major concertos, Beethoven makes prominent use of the horns, trumpets and timpani. The Largo is brooding, anticipating the Pathétique Sonata that would soon follow, but the Rondo finale is full of boisterous humour, a rustic contredanse given a sophisticated twist by its unpredictable theme (each phrase is of a different length).

4Symphony no. 7 in A major, Op.92

The Eroica is revolutionary, the Fifth is heroic, but the Seventh is boisterous and energetic, with the exception of the Allegretto, which has an elegiac feel, underpinned by a haunting rhythmic pattern. The Scherzo bounces and skips and the finale is exuberantly wild. Wagner described the Seventh as “the apotheosis of the dance” for its rhythmic drive and Antony Hopkins wrote, “The Seventh Symphony, perhaps more than any of the others, gives us a feeling of true spontaneity – the notes seem to fly off the page as we are born along on a floodtide of inspired invention.”

5Violin Concerto in D major, Op.61

Beethoven wrote only one violin concerto, commissioned by Franz Clement, the concertmaster of the orchestra at the Theater an der Wien. It is not a highly virtuosic piece, but lyrical and serious, tailor-made for Clement’s playing style. At nearly 50 minutes long (the lengthiest violin concerto in the standard repertoire), it puzzled the public and critics alike. Johann Nepomuk Moser, writing in the Theaterzeitung, speculated that “the endless repetitions of certain commonplace passages may easily become tedious… it is to be feared that if Beethoven continues upon this path, he and the public will fare badly.” 

Many violinists – most notably Fritz Kreisler – have written their own cadenzas for the concerto. Here, Patricia Kopatchinskaja plays a cadenza adapted from the one Beethoven wrote for his own piano arrangement of the concerto.

6Piano Sonata no. 21 in C major, “Waldstein”, Op.53

Of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, I’ve chosen not one of the profound late works, but a breakthrough sonata, dedicated to Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein, a close friend and early patron who sponsored Beethoven’s relocation from Bonn to Vienna in 1792. The Allegro con brio first movement pulses with supercharged energy and testy impatience, coiled as tightly as a spring. There’s no real slow movement, but an Adagio molto that acts as an introduction to the finale, which opens poetically, shimmering beautifully, before a series of aggressive interludes and a madcap coda.

7String Quartet no. 12 in E flat major, Op.127

Beethoven had not composed a string quartet for over a decade when he came to write the E flat major Op.127 in 1824, the first of his profound “late” quartets. Sublime, intimate, epic in length, it went beyond what had seemed possible within the realm of music, reaching the transcendental. The 1825 premiere by the Schuppanzigh Quartet confused audiences. The critic of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung described it as an “incomprehensible, incoherent, vague, over-extended series of fantasias – chaos, from which flashes of genius emerged from time to time like lightning bolts from a black thunder cloud.”

8Symphony no. 9 in D minor, “Choral”, Op.125

One of Beethoven’s last revolutionary compositional acts comes at the climax of his final symphony – he adds voices! After three long movements tracing a journey from chaos to serenity, the orchestra begins to fight among itself again, quelled when Beethoven sets Schiller’s Ode to Joy, an ecstatic vision of brotherhood for choir and four soloists.

Despite his deafness, Beethoven insisted on conducting the premiere in Vienna on 7th May 1824. His gesticulations were wildly out of time with the performers, who had been told beforehand to watch the concertmaster instead. At the end, several bars behind and unable to hear the audience’s applause, Beethoven continued conducting until the contralto Caroline Unger tapped him on the shoulder and turned him around to accept the acclaim.

9Mass in D major, “Missa solemnis”, Op.123

“My chief aim was to awaken and permanently instil spiritual feelings not only in the singers but in the listeners.” Beethoven decided to compose his “solemn mass” for the installation of his friend Archduke Nicholas Rudolph as a cardinal of the Church and Archbishop of Olmutz. He wrestled with the work for many years, missing the deadline and completing it in December 1822. He wrote it at the same time as his Ninth Symphony; indeed, he conducted the Kyrie, Credo and Agnus Dei at the Ninth’s premiere. 

Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s personal secretary, later wrote, “In the living room, behind a locked door we heard the master singing parts of the fugue in the Credo – singing, howling, stamping… The door opened and Beethoven stood before us with distorted features calculated to excite fear. He looked as if he had been in mortal combat with the whole host of contrapuntists, his everlasting enemies…”

10Violin Sonata no. 9 in A major, “Kreutzer”, Op.47

The ninth of his ten violin sonatas, the Kreutzer was the longest and most complex (and the only one to feature a slow introduction). It was composed for his friend, George Bridgetower, shortly after the violinist arrived in Vienna in 1803, before writing the Eroica Symphony. However, Beethoven and Bridgetower had a massive drunken argument (falling out over a woman) and the composer switched the dedication to the Parisian violinist, Rodolphe Kreutzer. Ironically, Kreutzer never actually played it. 

“Entirely new impulses, new possibilities, were revealed to me in myself, such as I had not dreamed of before.” Not the words of Beethoven, but the tragic hero of Leo Tolstoy’s 1889 novel The Kreutzer Sonata, where a performance of the sonata drives him over the edge and he kills his wife. Tolstoy's novel, in turn, inspired Janáček’s First String Quartet. 

Looking for something a bit different? Our early 2020 playlist explored Beethoven wandering off the beaten track…