The beautiful thing about Beethoven's Symphonies is that they are always in vogue. We are currently blessed with the embarrassment of riches from the ongoing recording of symphony cycles from two fine orchestras and conductors. In the recent article Two Beethoven Fifths, we took the bull by the horns and faced the most recognizable piece of classical music on record. Here we turn our attention to Beethoven's groundbreaking Third Symphony, the symphony after which music was never the same again.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (Op. 55) is considered by musicologist as the beginning of the end of the Classical Era. Beethoven began composing the symphony in 1803 while in residence in Heiligenstadt. Beethoven had move to Heiligenstadt in late 1801-early 1802 on the advice of his physician, Johann Schmidt, to rest his hearing, which had been giving the composer trouble since 1796, when the composer was 26 years old, and began to fail dramatically at the turn of the century.

It was in Heiligenstadt that Beethoven wrote his famous Heiligenstadt Testament where the composer put to paper the reconciliation of his hearing loss with his determination to live for and through his composing. In the testament, Beethoven alluded to suicidal thought, a fact confounded by the sunny and determined music he composed while there in residence (consider his Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 26).

Beethoven originally considered dedicating the symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte. Beethoven greatly admired ideals and ideology of the French Revolution. The composer saw Napoleon as the embodiment of such ideals but instead, dedicated the work to Prince Franz Joseph Maximillian Lobkowiz.

Beethoven continued to entertain giving the work the title of Bonaparte only to become disgusted and disillusioned when Napoleon proclaimed himself. Urban legend has the composer scratching the name Bonaparte out so violently that he tore a hole in the paper. Beethoven changed the title to Sinfonia eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire d'un grand'uomo ("heroic symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man").

Beethoven composed most of the symphony in late 1803, completing it early in 1804. The symphony was premiered privately in summer 1804 in his patron Prince Lobkowitz's castle Eisenberg in Bohemia. The first public performance was posted in Vienna's Theater an der Wien on April 7, 1805 with the composer conducting. Beethoven's originally scored the symphony for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B flat, 2 bassoons, 3 horns in E flat and C, 2 trumpets in E flat and C, timpani and strings.

The two orchestras and conductors are Osmo Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra (in the first American cycle in decades) on BIS and Philippe Herreweghe and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic on Pentatone. These two conductors and orchestras approach Beethoven from two vastly different but well-established directions with two equally unique and fresh performances. Hybrid SACD further adds value to these recordings. When starting with music of the quality of the Beethoven Symphony cycle listener is guaranteed nine sublime pieces of music.