Composed: 1808
Premiered: 1808, Vienna
Duration: 31 minutes

Beethoven’s Fifth is surely the best-known of all symphonies. Its surprises no longer surprise anyone – we all know what is coming next, yet it never ceases to thrill us. Beethoven wrote down some sketches for this work as early as 1803/04, the period when he was working on the Eroica, but did not complete it until 1808. In 1806, he thought that his long struggles with Fidelio were finally over. As it turned out, he revised the opera yet again in 1814, but just then his pent-up energies resulted in a tremendous flood of creative activity, including this symphony.

If he had a program in mind when he wrote the Fifth, he did not tell anyone, except for the cryptic remark that the opening phrase represented “fate knocking at the door.” To almost everyone, however, this symphony tells a story of progress from gloom to light, from repression to freedom, from defeat to ultimate victory, all within a scrupulously controlled classical framework.

The furiously energetic opening movement is followed by a calmer andante in A-flat Major, but the intrusion of C-Major fanfares hints at what is to come. The scherzo, hardly a joke, returns to an ominous C Minor.

The late Bramwell Tovey, in his famous program notes, called it “a dream of terror.” Once again, the rhythmic pattern of the first movement becomes a prominent feature. As in some other works, Beethoven links the finale to the previous movement, and again his imagination uses the simplest means to achieve a stunning effect, in perhaps the most remarkable passage of the whole symphony. It struck Hector Berlioz as so overwhelming that he felt the following blaze of C Major, with its brass and contrabassoon, was actually disappointing. The scherzo intrudes once again, but ultimately victory over sinister forces is complete.

Program note by the late Dr. C.W. Helleiner