Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, 2nd movement | conducted by Paavo Järvi

Triumph and tragedy are the main feelings in Beethoven’s Seventh – the tragedy having to do with the second movement, a sort of funeral procession. It was so well loved at the very first performance that the audience demanded for it to be repeated. That almost never happens at a concert nowadays, not even with the daring and unconventional Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and their imaginative conductor Paavo Järvi. But on Deutsche Welle’s YouTube channel, you can listen to the second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, opus 92 as many times as you want. This movement is marked “Allegretto,“ which could translate as “slightly fast.“ And that for a funeral march? Certainly the first listeners must have perceived it as such: The premiere performance of Beethoven’s Seventh was at a benefit concert in Vienna in December 1813 for wounded soldiers and their families. It came only two months after the Battle of Nations near Leipzig. The G