Music Director, Christian Kluxen shares his thoughts in this pre-concert talk video on Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Allegro vivace e con brio
Allegretto scherzando
Tempo di menuetto
Allegro vivace
Beethoven himself dubbed this “my little Symphony in F,” to distinguish it from the “Pastoral” Symphony No. 6, which shares the same key signature. Despite its brevity, it is no walk in the park, and Beethoven was resentful that it was overshadowed at its premiere in February of 1814 by the Seventh Symphony and by the overly bombastic Wellington’s Victory. The steady tick-tock of the second movement is a sly nod to Beethoven’s friend, Johann Maelzel, the inventor of the metronome. The English musicologist Sir George Grove described the finale of the Beethoven’s Eighth, saying, “It is pure Beethoven in his most individual and characteristic vein, full of those surprises and unexpected effects, those mixtures of tragedy and comedy, not to say farce, which make his music so true a mirror of human life, equal in his branch of the art to the great plays of Shakespeare in his – and for the same reasons.”
