Beethoven: Symphony No. 8 | Fabian Müller & The Trinity Sinfonia

It's the shortest of Beethoven's 9 symphonies and abounds with a sense of playfulness and optimism: Symphony No. 8 in F major. The classical symphony is performed here by The Trinity Sinfonia under the baton of Fabian Müller. The concert took place in 2024 at the Beethovenfest Bonn in the university auditorium.

(00:00) I. Allegro vivace e con brio
(08:32) II. Allegretto scherzando
(12:20) III. Tempo di Menuetto
(17:02) IV. Allegro vivace

Ludwig van Beethoven's (1770 – 1827) Symphony No. 8 in F Major, opus 93 must have had the audience in stitches at the first performance in Vienna on February 27, 1814. Why? It's full of musical jokes. But a couple of hundred years later, we don't "get" the jokes right away. And if you have to explain a joke – so much for progress! A joke depends on context, on playing with expectations and foiling them. That's what Beethoven does here, or did.

One of the most precious moments in Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is the second movement, where an elegant melody in the strings sounds out over a relentless tick-tick-tick in the woodwinds. Was Beethoven imitating the sound of a metronome here? So claimed his personal secretary and early biographer Anton Schindler. A nice story, but with Schindler's notoriously lively imagination, his claims should always be taken with a grain of salt. So you can take that story or leave it, or invent your own, when listening to the delightful "Allegretto scherzando" (moderately fast and joking).

Beethoven called his Symphony No. 8 in F Major the "little F Major." The "big" one was the Sixth Symphony, the "Pastoral." But that's not to suggest that the Eighth is a trifle. The German composer himself thought it was one of his best. It's comparatively short, and for Beethoven, soft and gentle. But as is so often the case with this composer, the music stands in utter contrast to what was going on in his life. The 8th Symphony was completed in October 1812 after Ludwig van Beethoven had spent all summer searching in vain for a cure for his ever-worsening deafness. He wrote the notes down in the resort town of Teplitz. That name will ring a bell with Beethoven cognoscenti – it's the place where he wrote one of the most famous love letters of all time, the "Letter to the Immortal Beloved." So there was a tortuous love affair going on too. Yet the symphony is all light and joy, wit and playfulness.

Fabian Müller has established himself as one of the most remarkable pianists and conductors of his generation. He caused a sensation in 2017 at the International ARD Music Competition in Munich, where he won five prizes. In 2018, he made his debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall with the Bavarian State Orchestra and performed at the Elbphilharmonie for the first time. At the invitation of Daniel Barenboim, he performed all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, and also performed at London’s Wigmore Hall. Müller regularly performs with major orchestras such as the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. His lively interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach has led him to a long-term collaboration with the Berliner Barock Solisten, an ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In search of his own ideal sound, he founded his own chamber orchestra which we hear here: The Trinity Sinfonia.

© Deutsche Welle 2024

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