Symphony No. 2 in D Major

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 is perhaps the most sheerly energetic and exuberant of all his nine symphonies, yet it was composed at what must without doubt have been the lowest point in his troubled life. The composer had first mentioned in a letter to friends in 1801 his gradual loss of hearing and the following year, while staying in the village of Heiligenstadt (then just outside Vienna), wrote what amounted almost to a suicide note, which has become known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament”. Although it remained unsent, in this document he laid bare his despair over his encroaching deafness and the enforced life of isolation he envisaged, turning only at its close to the conviction that he must continue to compose and serve his art despite his harrowing affliction. The music that emerged at this time, though, displays the flip side of this heart-rending coin: for all its reflective moments, the Second Symphony’s overriding verve and vigour betray no hint of the depths of depression into which Beethoven had sunk. Following an expectant, sustained slow introduction, the symphony’s “Allegro” is irrepressible in its high spirits, expansiveness, rhythmic drive and dramatic dynamic extremes. A hymn-like “Larghetto” forms an oasis of calm, before the fizzing “Scherzo”—this term used for the first time in a symphony—and a finale in which an apparently scrappy opening motif launches an “Allegro molto” of irresistible vitality.