Beethoven: Essential Works for Beginners 

Thank you for again a very nice video. I’m in love with classical music since I was 14. Now at 46 finally friends start to become interested as well and are asking me to help them find their way in classical. So very difficult where to start. But these videos help me a lot. And I already tell them: these are some suggestions, just listen, if you don’t like it its totally fine and I give some new suggestions. Just keep listening. You are training the trainer here👍😊

I was 14 years old, 36 years ago, when I discovered my love for classical music. My introduction to Beethoven was a set of 4 cassete tapes containing the 4th and 5th symphonies (Chicago/Leinsdorf), the "Emperor" piano concerto (Kempff), the violin concerto (Heifetz?) and some piano sonatas (no. 12, 22 and 23 "Appassionata", played by Sviatoslav Richter). Only middle-period Beethoven. I think that this choice of works was very appropriate for a first-time listener! Those recordings stuck with me for a long time; to this day I have yet to find a better Appassionata.

When I first heard the 7th, I thought, oh, classical rock n roll. Loved it. Still do.

Hello Mr. Hurwitz! I just wanted to tell you how much i enjoy your channel and how very very much you have ment to me over the last couple of years. A lot of life has happened to me lately and i felll into a depression and even drifted out of listening to music. Your ebullient personality, energy and palpable love of music has helped out of my depression and listening to great music again! I look forward to your videos every day! By the way, i share your love of Haydn. He has been my favorite composer ever since i heard Toscanini's recording of the Surprise Symphony (your funniest review! And i agree with it!). And im a Gilbert and Sullivan fan too! I look forward to the next video. With deepest respect and admiration.

Having an ocd for approaching mysic listening in chronological sequence, I have a very special love for symphony no 1. Even though I had heard bits of all the others by the time I started with the symphonies in order, I'm sure I had never heard a note from the first. And I felt so good about going serious with the cycle and now hearing the 1st brings me back to that period. Great content as usual Dave. Thanks

Great selection for beginners. No complaints. PC 4 is a personal favorite that is excellent for newbies, with its delightful mix of piano virtuosity and beautiful orchestral accompaniment. Any aspiring Beethoven listener will do well using this list to find their way to his vast array of timeless music. Well done.

I began with the 9th. Then the 2nd and then the 5th. And then the collection just GREW !!

I really love this series.

Yes. The 5th is what introduced me to Beethoven, indeed to all of classical music. The Reiner 5th on RCA, together with the Coriolan Overture that gives Egmont a run for the money. I could argue that the the Moonlight Sonata is better than the Pathetique for beginners, but what the hey. I also prefer the Piano Concerto 5 for beginners but the 4th works as well. Fleisher with Szell, amazing, a recording I've been listening to for decades.

This is a wonderful list. May I suggest one piece from late Beethoven? I think the Op. 110 Sonata is beautiful, not thorny to listen to, but still gives a flavor of how LvB's music evolved toward the end of his life.

"Listen to it more than once"… it’s interesting to hear you say that. I have just come back from the open day of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège and was discussing with a friend about "listening" and being able to take in a whole piece in one performance. How did people manage this before the advent of recorded medium or broadcasts? I mean even a 19th century wealthy person with an interest in music surely wouldn’t have the opportunity to hear - let’s say Beethoven’s 5th - more than a handful of times in they lifetime. How could they say for example that they preferred the 5th to the 9th, or vice versa? It’s not the sort of thing you can say with any amount of certainty or confidence after a few, if that, listens… or can you?

Great list Dave. I actually got started on quite a few of those. The fifth was pretty much my first complete symphonic experience by any composer and then came his seventh which I soon played to death. After that I got massively into the Emperor which for a time I put on a special pedestal all of its own. Following on from the glorious orchestral stuff I then came across a small piano sonata set played by John Ogden that included the Pathetique but also the Appassionata which was the one that grabbed me even more. And branching out from there I quickly discovered the Waldstein and Les Adieux both of which I loved immediately. The Egmont was another early favourite. The string quartets took longer and then the string trios and the violin and cello sonatas... but it's all just fabulous of course.

Danke!

The fourth piano concerto and the 5th symphony premiered at the same Day and both have a tan tan tan taaaan theme. Just funny facts to beginners

I'm very glad you didn't include the Eroica. (It took me years to learn to like it, and a few more years to love it. Thank you George Szell.) The Pathétique Sonata is the first one I ever loved. Perfect choice! And the 3rd Concerto, gripping as it is, would have meant too much c minor! Thumbs up on your choice of the 4th. If folks don't love Beethoven after hearing the 7th Symphony, they never will. It's a dazzler, as is Egmont. An excellent starter collection!

my intro to Beethoven was a Deutsche Grammophon CD I picked up entirely at random years ago as a teenager, containing the Razumovsky quartet and the Kreutzer violin sonata, which is also fantastic. perhaps its just the effect of primacy but those two pieces have remained some of my favourites from Beethoven to this day. in fact I think I might listen to it now

The Egmont is perfect for beginners. And ya gotta delve into the Sonatas. It’s a whole different world, intimate and deeply personal; powerful too.

The day I get bored with Beethoven is the day I won’t be here. The first piece I loved was the 9th, nowadays it’s the 7th which still gives me goosebumps.

Great lecture. Remember those LP's from the 1970's: "Beethoven's Greatest Hits", "Mozart's Greatest Hits", "Wagner's Greatest Hits", "Chopin's Greatest Hits"? Those were good introductions to non-musicians. I was shocked to read that Sir Thomas Beechum thought Schubert's symphonies were better than Beethoven's. He was a great wit, whether or not you agree with him.

Based on your previous comments, thought you would pick the Fourth Symphony.

And to think that he was almost totally deaf from about 1806 onwards (i.e., his mid-30's), for the last 20 years of his life.... That he wrote such fabulous music almost entirely from *imagining* it is one of the miracles of human history.

Wonderful series David. Thank you. And the Beethoven 5th! Yes! That was the Beethoven that hooked me for life! I recall after I heard it for the first time in its entirety that I thought this could have been used, in parts, in a film score. Star Wars? The point was it still sounded fresh and revolutionary. What music!

The opus 61 violin concerto was the 1st complete work of beethoven I listened to as mom and dad had it on vinyl..then I discovered the simulcast with 94.5 fm and channel 17 and was exposed to Leonard Bernstein discussing the 1st symphony followed by performance...I would grab a blank cassette and hit record..and that is how my earliest collection began.. then somewhere in that same time period I heard the leonore overture... let's just say my interest was strengthened and within a year or so finished all the symphonies and piano concerti ...I didn't get into the quartets until many years later...these discussions are excellent by the way..

I'm glad you stress that while Beethoven is rightly regarded as the quintessential composer of music depicting heroic conflict, the great dramatist of romantic struggle and triumph, he also wrote music of flat-out gorgeous lyricism. His actual writing for the voice may be less than successful, but instrumentally he could certainly write beautiful cantilena lines, and they're all over the sonatas and chamber music and concertos--and they're frankly what I mostly gravitate towards these days. Egmont was my first Beethoven encounter, and I agree that it's a perfect way to be introduced to that particular Beethovenian sturm und drang world (just as my first encounter with Tchaikovsky was happily his Romeo & Juliet overture, which I think is a similarly ideal introduction to his particular emotional world). Great series.

Are you going to do opera composers aswell? Puccini Verdi Wagner etc.?

I love this series

Wonderful video, Dave! I've been listening to classical music for more than 50 years and love Beethoven, but your wisdom and perspective have opened new vistas for me. It's been the same for the other videos in this series so please keep them coming!

Thank you for your insightful video! I wish you had been around when I first started rediscovering classical music in my twenties! 😊 🎵 🎼 🎶

I confirm this selection works because it's the one with which I started listening to classical music. Around 1975, I wanted to know what classical music looked like. So I decided to listen to Beethoven's 5th symphony, telling myself that even if I didn't like it, I would at least know what it is. It was an extraordinary discovery which made me want to listen to something else by Beethoven and I listened to what was played by him on the Spanish classical music radio. And at that time what was played most often from Beethoven was the works on this list!!! With a change. PC n°5 instead of PC n°4. And to this list was added sonata n°32. Now I like and listen to classical music and I know the work of Beethoven and other composers very well. I think a beginner after having listened to the 5th will want to listen to the 6th and the 9th because they are very well known. They are also very good for a beginner. And indeed the 3rd is a work that shouldn't be listened to at first. I remember being a little disappointed the first time I listened to it. Sorry for being long but this was to confirm that this selection works and that that it will open to the beginner who will listen to these works, an artistic experience that will change his life.

You didn't want to take a tie, I guess...?

Interesting mixture of both the severe and genial Beethovens. I'm surprised, but delighted, you chose the 4th Piano Concerto! I believe all the best people prefer it to the Emperor. Martha Agerich claims it as her favorite and (somehow) for that reason refuses to make a recording of it. An incredible artist (and a real piece of work.) I recently came across a pianist who pointed out that the Waldstein begins with "accompaniment," which you then discover is actually melody.

Having listened to Beethoven for a few months now, this is in fact a definitive list. Quite excellent, you can’t go wrong, rather you will start off very well with this list.

Thanks for all you do

I remember my first Beethoven primer, which consisted of two cassettes released by Decca. The works that introduced me to LvB were: Egmont Overture Pastoral Symphony Moonlight Sonata Emperor Piano Concerto Leonore 3 Overture Howzat for beginners?

I hope you have one of these for Shostakovich.