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Having more or less completed the first movement of his Second Symphony, however, Beethoven suddenly had to interrupt it to finish a major commission – music for a ballet entitled The Creatures of Prometheus. Other works then also intervened, and he did not return to his unfinished symphony for some time. The finale was eventually completed early in 1802, in preparation for a concert that spring, but at the last minute Beethoven was denied the theatre he had intended to use. He had to wait another year until the symphony finally received its premiere – on 5 April 1803.

Problems with the composition and performance of this symphony were not the only thing that frustrated Beethoven at this time, however. Far more serious was his increasing deafness, for which he desperately but unsuccessfully sought medical remedy. Eventually he gave up in despair, and wrote his famous ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’ of October 1802, in which he poured out his feelings in a moving document addressed to his brothers but not found until after his death. ‘A little more and I would have ended my life,’ he wrote. ‘Only my art held me back.’ In his art he lived in another world, and his Second Symphony reflects the joy of creation, rather than the despair of his personal circumstances.

Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis with his orchestra MusicAeterna