We love the summer months. Let’s soak in as much sun and summer as we can to recharge our batteries of confidence, warmth, and resilience.

What better music than that of Beethoven to take us into the countryside on a beautiful, hot August afternoon?

Listen to this masterpiece of symphonic poetry—Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F-Major, also known as the Pastoral Symphony—the longest of the Beethoven symphonies except for the Ninth.

Beethoven wrote this Symphony in F major in tandem with the Fifth, and both premiered in Vienna at the same four-hour concert in 1808, a hugely ambitious undertaking for Beethoven. Critics consider the Sixth Symphony just as “radical” as the Fifth, and it is stunning to think that Beethoven was able to compose these two powerful and innovative pieces of music simultaneously. In many ways, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is completely unprecedented and almost unfollowed.

We have chosen the Manfred Honeck performance of the Sixth with the German WDR Sinfonieorchester for its fresh and “provocative” rendering of the well-known piece.

Related:

Symphony No. 6 by Beethoven on Wikipedia

Manfred Honeck on Wikipedia

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