Ludwig van Beethoven

Fur Elise is a short piano work built around a returning refrain and contrasting episodes. The famous opening alternates two neighboring notes before settling into A minor. It was not published during Beethoven's...

The Grosse Fuge began as the last movement of Beethoven's Op. 130 quartet. Its scale and technical demands helped prompt publication as a separate work with a replacement finale for the quartet. Several contrasting...

Beethoven begins his final piano concerto with orchestral chords answered by sweeping solo flourishes, immediately giving the piano a commanding presence. He then builds a broad first movement, a restrained slow...

Beethoven called both Op. 27 sonatas sonatas in the manner of a fantasy, suggesting freedom within the established genre. This C-sharp-minor work begins with a slow movement, continues with a brief Allegretto, and...

The Appassionata contrasts a quiet, unsettled opening with abrupt force, wide keyboard spacing, and carefully placed silences. A central variations movement provides a different kind of concentration before leading...

Beethoven's last piano sonata has only two movements, but their contrast creates a substantial whole. A turbulent C-minor movement follows a weighty introduction. The second movement turns to C major for an Arietta...

Beethoven links seven movements into an unusually continuous quartet. A slow fugue begins the work, while a long central variations movement provides one of its main points of balance. Brief connecting movements and...

Beethoven's first published symphony opens with chords that briefly point away from C major before the home key is established. Its four movements retain the outline inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but wind...

Beethoven's Second expands the scale and instrumental independence of the Classical symphony. Its substantial slow introduction leads to a vigorous Allegro, followed by a long Larghetto. A scherzo replaces the...

The Eroica greatly expands the scale and dramatic reach of Beethoven's symphonic writing. A broad first movement is followed by a funeral march, a scherzo with prominent horns, and a variations finale drawing on a...

Beethoven wrote the Fourth during a remarkably productive period that also produced his Violin Concerto and Fourth Piano Concerto. Count Franz von Oppersdorff commissioned the symphony. Its quiet, harmonically...

The opening four-note rhythm becomes a building block that connects much of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Its compact first movement contrasts with a variations movement, a scherzo, and a finale reached through an...

Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony follows five connected ideas about a visit to the countryside: arrival, a brook, a gathering, a storm, and thanksgiving. He described its purpose in terms of feelings rather than...

Rhythm gives Beethoven's Seventh Symphony an unusually persistent sense of motion. After an expansive introduction, the first movement settles into a distinctive dotted pattern. The Allegretto supplies a quieter but...

Beethoven's Eighth compresses its argument into four relatively concise movements filled with rhythmic surprises. The second movement is lightly mechanical rather than a broad slow movement, and a minuet looks back...

Beethoven expands the symphony by bringing vocal soloists and chorus into its finale. The last movement sets passages from Friedrich Schiller's poem on joy and human fellowship, after recalling and challenging...

Quiet timpani strokes introduce a concerto whose spacious orchestral argument gives the violin room for long, singing lines. Beethoven often asks the soloist to embellish or illuminate ideas already heard in the...

Beethoven wrote this unusually expansive sonata for a performance with George Bridgetower, whose playing helped shape its first appearance. The later dedication names Rodolphe Kreutzer. A slow introduction opens into...