Symphony No.2 in D major, Op.36

Beethoven’s First Symphony, as its spectacular early success confirms, was well calculated to sound attractively fresh without offending too much against the conventional taste of the day. With the Second Symphony it was different. When that work was first performed, in the Theater-an-der-Wien on 5th April 1803, the Viennese critics were quite taken aback by it: “The First Symphony,” one of them wrote, “is better because it is developed with lightness and is less forced, while in the Second the striving for the new and surprising is already more apparent. However, it is obvious that both are not lacking in surprising and brilliant passages of beauty.”

The composer cannot have been dismayed by such comments, since he seems to have set out to provoke them. Far from being discouraged by his hearing problems as he worked on the Second Symphony early in 1802 - which was before he moved into the country at Heiligenstadt and got really depressed - he was exultant in his creative powers and supremely confident in taking risks. The full-orchestral fortissimo arpeggio on D minor in the middle of the slow introduction is, for us, an anticipation of the “Choral” Symphony. For the audience in 1803 it can only have been a shock, and it cannot have been reassuring when in the Allegro con brio, carried along by the impetus of a busy little figure associated with the first subject, they found themselves jolted by a series of vehement minor harmonies. It takes an uncommonly long coda, almost another development section, to put things right.

The Larghetto makes luxuriously melodious amends - or so it seems until the middle section of the movement shows the dark side of this apparently idyllic material by taking the first four notes of the main theme through a variety of unsettling experiences. The Scherzo, on the other hand, is consistently happy, genuinely witty in the outer sections and replete with bucolic good humour in the middle.

The finale is high-spirited too, for the most part. Flicked into elated motion by its hyper-active first two notes and incorporating a delightful second-subject melody for woodwind, it nevertheless goes through a bruising experience with minor harmonies in the middle section. The coda confirms that celebration is, in fact, in order, but not without having much boisterous fun at the expense of anyone who ever doubted it.

Gerald Larner©