Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60

Program notes

About the Work

Beethoven wrote his Fourth Symphony in the summer and early autumn of 1806, once his long struggle with the first versions of his opera Fidelio was behind him. He spent that summer in Silesia at the country estate of Prince Lichnowsky, and from there visited Count Franz von Oppersdorff, who kept a private orchestra at his castle in Oberglogau. The orchestra played Beethoven’s Second Symphony for its composer, and the Count commissioned a new one. The Fourth is dedicated to him.

It seems that Beethoven set aside a symphony already in progress, the one in C minor that became the Fifth, to write it. The six months that followed were among the most productive of his life: the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto were finished in the same year, and all three works share a broad, lyrical manner that is far from the heroics of the Eroica. The first performance was a private one in March 1807 at the Vienna palace of Prince Lobkowitz. The public heard the symphony at the Burgtheater in April 1808.

Standing between the Eroica and the Fifth, the Fourth has always been the least played of the three. Schumann is said to have called it a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants, a phrase that has done the piece no favours, because slender is the last thing it sounds in performance. Schumann admired it all the same, and so did Berlioz, who heard in it a return to the manner of the Second Symphony, lively and alert in some places and of a celestial sweetness in others.

The orchestra is smaller than the one the Eroica needs: there is only one flute, with pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, timpani and strings. The piece lasts a little over half an hour. Its humour, and its habit of building long spans out of scraps, point back to Haydn, who had been Beethoven’s teacher and was still alive when it was first played. Heard directly after a Haydn symphony, as it is in this programme, the kinship is hard to miss.

What to Listen For

Adagio, Allegro vivace. The symphony in B-flat major begins in B-flat minor, very quietly: a plucked note, a long-held chord in the winds, and strings moving slowly beneath it. Nothing in these thirty-eight slow bars predicts what follows. A few loud chords break the spell and the Allegro bursts in at full speed. Its second group is a conversation passed between bassoon, oboe and flute. The most original stroke comes at the return of the main theme, which is prepared by a very long, very soft drum roll that swells until the whole orchestra arrives on top of it.

Adagio. The strings set up a ticking rhythmic figure and the violins lay a long, singing melody over it. That ticking rhythm hardly ever stops; it passes round the orchestra and ends up alone on the timpani in the last bars. The second theme is a wistful solo for the clarinet.

Allegro vivace. A scherzo in all but name, although many printed scores head it Menuetto, and far too fast to dance to. Beethoven extends the usual plan: the trio comes round twice, and the scherzo three times, the last cut short by a call from the horns.

Allegro ma non troppo. A finale in perpetual motion. The bassoon has a famously awkward moment when it has to play the racing main theme alone, and sweetly, to lead back to the reprise. At the very end the tune is slowed to half speed and broken up by pauses, a joke straight out of Haydn, before the orchestra slams the door.