Beethoven broadened and intensified the emotional range of symphonic music, pushing this process further with each of his symphonies. He was expressing the newly enlivened, dramatic change in values brought by the Enlightenment: liberty, progress, self-determination, human dignity, and happiness for all, not merely for the ruling class. Symphony No. 1 utilizes the form of Haydn and Mozart, but adds structural and harmonic complexities, and wider dynamic range. Symphony No. 7 (the 2nd on CD1) evokes a future “beyond war and need” (all quotes are from liner notes); Wagner wrote of it: “All tumult, all yearning and storming of the heart become here the blissful insolence of joy.” Joy and dance rhythms dominate, tho’ the 3rd mvmt is solemn. Symphony No. 2 opens with a powerful outburst that dissolves into gracious lyricism. It is marked by rough humor in the final 2 mvmts, e.g., asymmetrical arrangement of loud and soft in the Scherzo, and a rhythmic “hiccup” in the last mvmt. Symphony No. 4 is “light-footed, sparkling and witty, as fine and delicate as chamber music. It aims for . . . play and playful gestures.” But it also contains “rhythmic insistence, violent accents and syncopation,” and fierce energy. The Creatures of Prometheus, ballet music, expressed Beethoven’s admiration for the Prometheus of the age, Napoleon. The music is, by turns, idyllic and troubling. Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) was Beethoven’s favorite, before he composed the Ninth. It exceeds in length any symphony previously written, and “Its harmonic language was highly advanced for its age.” Strong rhythms and jarring dissonance disturbed some listeners. The 2nd mvmt, Funeral March, “is one of the blackest, most intense expressions of grief ever written.” Beethoven’s ambivalence toward [Napoleon] became transformed into a subjective statement on heroic birth, death, and rebirth. . . What is born is an overtly emotional music of unprecedented power and immediacy.”