BBC Symphony Orchestra
(Leader,Paul Beard )
Conducted by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt
Beethoven's ' Eroica ' Symphony was heard for the first .time in 1804. The date is significant, since in this work Beethoven turned his back on the music of the eighteenth century and inaugurated the new symphonic style of the nineteenth century. This was the first occasion on which a striking and serious programmatic idea was used as the basis of a symphony; the length of the symphony was increased (from the twenty to thirty-five minutes of Mozart and Haydn to approximately fifty minutes), and the normal orchestra augmented.
These departures from eighteenth-century tradition were to lead through the fifth symphony, with its ' Fate knocking at the door ' and additional trombones, through the sixth (the Pastoral) with its detailed programme, to the ninth, with its choral finale, and so on to the music-dramas of Wagner and the symphonies of Berlioz, Bruckner, and Alahler.
This, then, was one of the most revolutionary works in musical history, and something of its original impact can still be felt at the very outset: a mighty intention is proclaimed in those two crashing chords. Deryck Ccoke