Symphony No. 3: Dedicated To ‘The Memory...

Its power and sheer ambition influenced and intimidated scores of composers who followed Beethoven. 

A fun, almost comical, moment before Beethoven stepped away from the symphony for a decade and wrote his ultimate triumph. 

Ludwig van Beethoven's Seventh Symphony pulses with rhythmic invention. The reliance on the beat gives the piece an immediacy that rivals the music in any of Beethoven's symphonies. 

Synopsis On today’s date in 1845, the sleepy little German town of Bonn played host to 5000 visitors. These ranged from curious natives and opportunistic pickpockets to famous composers, performers, and music lovers from many countries, including British monarch Queen Victoria an ... Show More

C’est l’un sinon LE drame de Ludwig Van Beethoven, être devenu sourd. Malgré ce handicap cruel, le compositeur et pianiste Allemand, improvisateur de génie, un des plus grands musiciens de tous les temps, a continué de composer des œuvres majeures. Mention spéciale à sa dernière ... Show More

Synopsis It might seem odd that during his long career, Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály wrote only nine works for orchestra. When someone asked him about this, he replied, “I was busy with more important work: I had to educate a public.” Kodály and his countryman Béla Bartók wer ... Show More

Synopsis For later Romantic composers like Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was “the apotheosis of the dance,” and certainly sitting still during the Symphony’s dizzying finale is not always easy. But for those in the audience at its premiere in 1813, as part of a benef ... Show More

Synopsis On today’s date in 1940, the Chicago Symphony helped celebrate their 50th anniversary with the premiere performance of a specially commissioned symphony from famous Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky himself was on hand to conduct his Symphony in C — a work tha ... Show More

Synopsis On today’s date in 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted the New York Philharmonic in a concert billed as “the first of a series arranged in chronological sequence, comprising the most famous composers from the period of Bach to the present day.” Mahler’s program included works ... Show More

Benjamin Zander's latest recording is of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus on Brattle Media, and it’s one in which the conductor has sought to perform the work exactly as he believes the composer original intended. Zander talks to Editor Marti ... Show More

2020 is Beethoven Year - he was born 250th years ago, in 1770 – and the record industry is lining up a vast number of releases in celebration. Berlin-based Deutsche Grammophon, not surprisingly, is spearheading the campaign with a huge Beethoven Edition and one of the earliest re ... Show More

In the mid 19th century, the way to make yourself famous in France as a composer was to write operas. From Cherubini, to Meyerbeer, to Bizet, to Berlioz, to Gounod, to Massenet, to Offenbach, to Saint Saens, to foreign composers who wrote specifically for the Paris Opera like Ros ... Show More

Captain, We Hit A Schoenberg! Did Arnold Schoenberg break Classical music? Widely considered the greatest composer of the 20th century, Schoenburg’s innovations in ‘atonality’ (a term he detested throughout his life) changed the trajectory of music forever. In this episode, Joann ... Show More