Blog

Those famous four notes first burst into our world 216 years ago and they’ve been reverberating ever since.

Yes, we’re talking about Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, music as iconic as it is hypnotic, as inseparable from our lives as it is inescapable. But why? What makes this salvo of sheer force and rhythmic determination so potent, and why does The Florida Orchestra return to it every few years?

“Beethoven was the master of grabbing our attention and holding us in a vice-like grip,’’ says TFO Music Director Michael Francis, who leads three Hough Family Foundation Masterworks concerts Nov. 1-3. “He’s intensity personified.’’

To many ears, the symphony will be more intense this time, as listeners will hear a difference from the last performances in 2021. That’s because Francis will conduct a score retouched by the composer/conductor Gustav Mahler, who felt the work needed instrumental doubling to accommodate larger orchestras and halls as well as improved instruments.

The program opens with another gut punch: Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra, known to millions as the theme from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“So, this is a serious upgrade in power,’’ Francis says of Mahler’s revision. “And along with the Strauss, we’re offering two of the most famous openings in classical music.’’

How do the musicians feel about another go at Beethoven’s Fifth? The music is symbolic of perseverance in the wake of hardship, of personal triumph and even heroism, says Natalie Jen Hoe, the orchestra’s principal clarinetist.

“It’s a piece that’s timeless and many listeners can connect some part of their life to it, and that, I believe, is what makes it such a mesmerizing piece,’’ she says. “It becomes so personal to each listener.’’

Hoe is looking forward to the expanded Mahler version, which she views as an enhancement of the “textures and voices that he assumes Beethoven was trying to achieve. Colors are brighter and more insistent with the added use of instruments like the E-flat clarinet.’’

Principal timpanist John Bannon is a veteran of countless Beethoven symphonies since he joined the orchestra in 1988. Every performance of the Fifth is unique in its own way, regardless of how many times he suits up for it.

“We’re always learning something new, particularly about older music, that influences what we do,’’ he says. “I’ve been playing it a long time, and approaches have varied pretty widely.’’

What doesn’t vary is the symphony’s staying power. Beethoven builds a symphonic world around just four notes that launch the work and keep its structure bound together. This motif takes on various guises as the music moves forward, and what Beethoven accomplishes through an economy of expression – not to mention the transition from darkness to light – is remarkable.

So much has been written about the work that it seems to be in a state of constant reinvention, with each successive generation discovering something new. In his book The First Four Notes: Beethoven’s Fifth and the Human Imagination, Matthew Guerrieri devotes nearly 300 pages to the opening moments alone.

The electrifying motto that jumpstarts the music is “short enough to remember and portentous enough to be memorable,’’ he notes, “seeming to unlock the symphony’s meaning but leaving its mysteries temptingly out of reach, saying something but admitting nothing.’’

In other words, the Fifth is abstract and intangible, so it’s up to the listener to interpret what it might mean: Fate knocking at the door? Victory over tyranny? A deaf composer shaking his fist at his lot in life? Or is it just ink on a page, as the conductor Arturo Toscanini once suggested: “To some, it’s Napoleon. To some, it’s a philosophical struggle. To me, it’s allegro con brio.’’

The music was first heard on Dec. 22, 1808 in Vienna in an all-Beethoven marathon. The concert stretched four hours and included the Symphony No. 6; the aria Ah! Perfido; two sections from the Mass in C; the Piano Concerto No. 4 with the composer at the keyboard; a piano improvisation; and the Choral Fantasy for Piano, Orchestra and Chorus.

Although Beethoven cast his Fifth in the urgent key of C minor, he ends the struggle in the radiance of C major – and one of the most riveting climaxes in music.

“People try to put Beethoven in a box, but he can’t be contained,’’ says Susan Giles Wantuck, news and classical music host/reporter for WUSF and Classical WSMR. “He had a keen understanding of the human condition. That’s why his Symphony No. 5 has come to live in the hearts and minds of generations of people over the years. It’s a work that defines classical music and there are no barriers to knowing it and making it your own.’’