Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93

Completed in 1812 and premiered in 1814 alongside the Seventh Symphony, Beethoven's Eighth is the most compact and overtly good-humored of his mature symphonies. Beethoven himself called it 'my little Symphony in F,' yet it is anything but slight: the opening Allegro vivace e con brio bristles with wit and rhythmic energy, while the second movement Allegretto scherzando — famously said to mock Maelzel's metronome with its tick-tock accompaniment — is a masterpiece of comic timing. The Menuetto is the last true minuet Beethoven wrote for orchestra, self-consciously archaic and charming, and the finale's coda explodes into a ferocious F-sharp passage of unprecedented harmonic violence before resolving in boisterous triumph. Conductors from Carlos Kleiber to Nikolaus Harnoncourt have prized it as a test of rhythmic incisiveness and chamber-like transparency.