Beethoven Festival: Symphonies 7 & 8

Avoid peak hour with a quick post-work Beethoven fix at this early-evening concert of his energetic and playful Seventh and Eighth symphonies.

The Seventh gathers momentum as it bounds along with great energy. Similar to the Sixth, it has a slight tinge of the pastoral, though the mood is darker and punchier than its predecessor. After its premiere in 1813, the crowd demanded to hear the second movement again – but you’ll only need to hear it once to be humming its theme on the tram home.

In 1812 when he was almost completely deaf, Beethoven composed his Eighth Symphony, which has been described quite brilliantly as one of the ‘shortest, weirdest, and most compelling symphonies of the 19th Century’ (The Guardian). What appears on the surface as light-hearted playfulness is in reality a radical work that challenged the idea of the symphony as a genre. It also contains one of music’s best jokes in the second movement, where he imitates his friend’s new invention – the metronome.