Sunday Classics: Music for a late-spring Sunday -- Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony

The last time we focused on the Pastoral Symphony, it was as half of Beethoven's "fraternal twin" symphonies, the Fifth and Sixth. Here Riccardo Muti conducts the Filarmonica della Scala in the indelibly imprinted first movement of the Fifth (1998).

by Ken

We've been creeping up on Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Friday night hearing the poetic second-movment "Scene by the Brook" (along with the "Scene in the Fields" from Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique), then last night moving on to the little scherzo, "Merry Gathering of Peasants." But the Pastoral isn't new for longtime Sunday Classics readers; we listened to the whole thing last October. At that time, however, we considered it as one of Beethoven's "fraternal twin" symphonies, Nos. 5 and 6, Opp. 67 and 68.

I still think it's awesome that Beethoven conceived these two symphonies in such a close time frame, though I've already suggested that these contrastingly paired works in a way make perfect sense: One releases all sorts of material and impulses inappropriate to the other.


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