Classics Today: 10/10, highest rating. The fact that Beethoven
was nearly thirty before he completed his First Symphony is
indicative of his great respect for the genre. His careful
preparations included a year of regular lessons with Haydn, the
‘father of the symphony’, as well as the composing of piano
sonatas and piano trios that exhibit distinctively symphonic
elements. Meanwhile he mastered the art of writing for orchestra
by composing a number of concertos. As we know, these
preparations paid off and the First Symphony has been part of
the repertoire ever since its première in 1800. Already some
years later Beethoven sketched some ideas for an orchestral work
based on pastoral themes, but again he took his time in bringing
them to fruition. The sketches were laid aside until 1808 when
Beethoven, in his Symphony No.6, took up the challenge of
combining two highly different traditions: the symphony genre
and the pastoral idiom. As Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper states
in his liner notes to this disc, ‘Bee