The 10 Best Beethoven Symphony Finales

10. Yes, I know, he only wrote 9 symphonies, but nobody does ‘top 9’ lists. So: best Beethovenian finale in a non-Beethoven symphony? It could be Brahms 1, in which Brahms masterfully integrates some of the formal complexities of LvB9 into an instrumental setting. It’s both an homage to LvB9 and a critique of it. It could be Shostakovich’s 5^th, which is probably the most Beethovenian finale by a symphonist other than Beethoven. However, it probably won’t surprise long-time Vftp readers if I award the prize to Schumann 2. It’s music which, in its early pages, abounds in Beethovenian rhythmic ecstasy and drive, and is full of meaningful thematic homage to Beethoven, with a telling quotation from An die ferne Geliebte. But Schumann finds a way to take the music in a direction completely his own, both formally and emotionally. His most Beethovenian choice is to embrace the legacy of his forbears by finding a path of his own. Explore the score here.

10. Symphony 4. Man, this is such a great movement. It’s really exciting, but not as exciting as the finale of 7. It’s funny, but not as funny as the finale of 8. The jokes are less rude than the jokes in 2. But don’t let its position on this list fool you. If this were a list of 1,000 best symphonic finales by every composer ever, it still might well be No. 9 on the list.

8. Symphony 1. This movement is fresher than fresh. It’s EXTREMELY difficult to play. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an orchestra quite reach Beethoven’s tempo marking of half note = 88, but this movement has a need for speed. When done too slowly it’s like chewing on musical gristle while waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles for an hour or two. It’s got to sound like the world’s greatest juggler throwing and catching 6 balls at once on a jet-powered unicycle while brushing a feral cat’s teeth. When it does….. Bam!

7. Symphony 6. Incredibly touching and soulful. This is music you just have to give yourself to, but if you do, there’s something so amazingly generous and warm-hearted about it. Gentle Beethoven is some of the best Beethoven. By far it is the hardest of them all to pull off musically for the performer, but it’s the only one of his finales where the Deity seems to show up and say hi when it all goes to plan.

https://youtu.be/Rd6pXl7Niik?t=5227

6. Symphony 7. This is probably the one I enjoy conducting the most. Seriously, nothing can really be more fun than this movement. And is there any ending that arrives like this one? He just keeps taking it to the next level, building towards that first-ever symphonic fff. Ask any conductor which piece is most likely to find them onstage with a shit-eating grin, and it will be this one. Hear it live here and here.

5. Symphony 3. This is LvB’s craftiest finale, and the one in which he more-or-less re-invents the “big surprise” (Mozart made good use of this in the finale of his 13^th Piano Concerto). Beethoven returns to a theme he’d already used before for a new set of variations of staggering complexity, with and virtuosity. The contrapuntal mastery here puts him for the first time on the exalted plane of previous masters of that greatest aspect of the composer’s art: Bach, Handel, Mozart and Haydn. Then there’s the big surprise -the long, slow coda, its own series of variations, each more profound than the one before it. It integrates the otherwise pretty careful finale into the deep and dramatic emotional world of the first two movements, something even Mozart and Haydn had never managed so powerfully.

5. Symphony 5. Beethoven returns to the idea of the ‘big surprise’, which he introduced in the 3^rd. Instead of throwing in an unexpected slow section, he literally throws us back in musical time in proper Marty McFly style into a movement we thought had ended some time ago. The effect should be jarring and deeply upsetting – as if you think you’re awake and safe and having the greatest day of your life, and suddenly realise you never left the nightmare you were having. Or you could liken it to the horror movie where the bogey man reappears after you’ve been persuaded he was gone for good. People used to say the 5^th is about Fate. I think it’s mostly about failure. Again and again, this C minor symphony keeps trying to become a C major symphony, from very early in the 1^st mvt, but again and again it fails. This last and greatest failure is one of music’s most powerful ideas, something nearly unprecedented in classical music. Beethoven’s message is so inspiring – we may fail a thousand times, but our only choice is to keep trying. The often-lampooned ending is really the most hard-fought thing in all of music. I often think it’s Beethoven saying “fuck you, I made it to fucking C fucking major and this fucking time, nobody is fucking taking it away from me!”

https://youtu.be/qrmN02CuBnM

3. Symphony 2. Funny finales in the Haydn-esque tradition are Beethoven’s favorite finales. 1, 2, 4 and 8 are all completely funny finales, and most of the finales of 3 and 7 are also funny. 2 is not quite is funniest finale, but given that the main theme is a sort of deranged musical fart joke, it’s certainly his rudest, and it really, really works.

2. Symphony 9. It’s always been fashionable for composers, who are often jealous types, to bash this one. Is it too much of a hodgepodge? Does the form really work? Is there a form? What is a choir doing in a symphony? And why are you making them sing so high? But this misses the point, which is that the 9^th’s finale, done right, can take an audience of strangers and bring them all together in ecstatic celebration of their shared humanity in a way which no other work of art in any genre I know of does. “Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!”. Hear it live with the ESO on 17 October, 2020.

https://youtu.be/HFxzqYHA4_E

1. Symphony 8. No, it doesn’t shake the soul like 5, it’s not soulful like 6, nor world-embracing like 9. 2 is naughtier. 3 even craftier. But, after all these years, every time I come back to this movement, I’m just more and more blown away. After the concert on which 7 and 8 were premiered a friend said to Beethoven “Everyone liked 7 much better,” to which Beethoven said “That’s because 8 is so much better.” I’m not sure whether that’s true of the whole of 7 and 8, but if you’re looking for Beethoven’s best symphonic finale, this is it. Haydn would have loved it. Hear it live.

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