Ep. 41: Beethoven’s 6th Symphony: The Art of Going Nowhere

In Part II of our journey through Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, Alberto Sanna and I move from the quiet flow of the brook to birdsong, village dancing, the terrifying storm, and finally the return of calm. Along the way, we explore why some of the apparently simplest passages were among the hardest for us to perform, how articulation and rhythmic weight make Beethoven’s unusually spacious tempi come alive, and how Czerny transforms orchestral colour into something astonishing on the fortepiano. The famous bird calls and storm also bring us straight back to the central question behind this entire project: what happens when we take Beethoven’s metronome marks seriously? Far from making the music static, the whole-beat approach reveals layers of rhythm, colour, timing and physical energy that are easily lost at modern speeds. A listening guide to movements II–V of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony—and to one of the most extraordinary storms ever written in music.

Maurice Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte presents a fascinating tempo puzzle. The first piano edition gives a metronome mark of ♩ = 80. Yet Ravel was reportedly known for playing the piece extraordinarily slowly. About a decade later, his orchestral version appeared with a very different indication: ♩ = 54. Why did Ravel change the tempo so dramatically? In this episode, we compare the scores, historical accounts, Ravel’s own piano-roll recording, and performances by later pianists. The result leads us into a much broader question: could Ravel’s Pavane preserve evidence of the transition from whole-beat to single-beat metronome practice around the turn of the twentieth century? It is a small musical mystery with potentially much larger consequences for how we understand historical tempo.

The discount code revealed at the end of this podcast can be redeemed here: https://www.authenticsound.org/recordings Pablo Casals knew Brahms personally. Decades later, in a recorded masterclass, he made a striking claim: Brahms did not count the quarter notes in his Allegro vivace, but the eighth notes—and that is why his music is “nearly always” played too fast. In this episode, Wim and Stefan unpack the far-reaching implications of that remark. What determines whether music feels like an Andante, an Allegretto, or an Allegro molto? Can exactly the same physical tempo produce a completely different sense of movement, depending on which note value the performer or listener follows? The discussion then turns to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 16, Op. 31 No. 1, and Czerny’s seemingly contradictory instruction that its Allegretto finale must be played as an Allegro molto. Far from being a contradiction, it may reveal something fundamental about nineteenth-century notation, subdivision, and tempo perception. Casals’ brief demonstration takes us directly to the heart of whole-beat metronome practice: historical tempo was not simply a matter of speed, but of understanding which layer of the music carried the movement. The episode concludes with Alberto Sanna performing the Rondo from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 16 in G major, Op. 31 No. 1.

When was the last time Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony knocked on your door? 00:23:11 — I. Allegro con brio01:11:48 — II. Andante con moto01:41:16 — III. Scherzo. Allegro01:58:39 — IV. Allegro Everyone knows those four notes. They may be the most famous opening in all of music. But familiarity can also become a problem: once a piece has become an icon, we often stop truly listening. In this episode, Wim Winters and Alberto Sanna return to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with new ears. Using their recording of Czerny’s four-hand transcription as a point of departure, they explore how tempo, notation, articulation, silence, long notes, and the sound world of the fortepiano radically reshape the listening experience. This is not simply a discussion about speed. It is about character. The famous opening motive is not treated as a rushed gesture, but as something weighty, solemn, physical, and deeply human. The long silences begin to speak. The rests become part of the drama. The Andante reveals an almost heartbreaking tenderness. The Scherzo and Finale unfold not as a race toward triumph, but as a vast architectural journey from darkness into light. Along the way, Wim and Alberto discuss the 1808 Akademie concert, the shock of their whole-beat approach, the role of Czerny’s transcription, the unique response of their Viennese fortepiano, and the many places where Beethoven’s score begins to make new sense when given more time to breathe. For listeners who think they already know Beethoven’s Fifth, this episode asks a simple question: What if the most familiar symphony ever written still has something completely new to say?

First things first! Check out our new Kickstarter campaign (Carl Czerny School of Velocity here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/authenticsound/czernys-school-of-velocity-as-youve-never-heard-before) In this episode, we return to The Etude, the late nineteenth-century American music magazine, and look more closely at its remarkable discussions of the metronome. At first sight, the questions seem simple. Why do the tempo words printed on the metronome not match the actual tempo of musical works? Why do some of Schumann’s, Mendelssohn’s, and Chopin’s metronome marks appear too fast? And how should a pianist understand the indicated speed of difficult études? But beneath these practical questions lies a much larger problem. The answers given in The Etude often reveal a deep confusion. The writers acknowledge that nineteenth-century performance had become faster and more extreme, yet at the same time they struggle with earlier metronome marks that already seem impossible when read in the modern Single Beat way. That contradiction is central to the Whole Beat question. If musicians in the 1880s were already confused by metronome marks from earlier generations, then these sources do not solve the historical problem. They expose it. We discuss Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Godowsky, Saint-Saëns, Czerny, and the strange gap between theoretical explanations and what can actually be played at the keyboard.