The piece
Beethoven finished his Fifth Symphony in 1808; it was first performed in Vienna on 22 December that year. Its first movement opens with four notes, three eighths then a held note, played by the whole orchestra in unison, and almost everything that follows grows out of this motif. This easy version, written for Noctave after the piano version of the Augener edition, takes the first twenty-one bars, then the chords that end the movement.
At the start, both hands play the four notes an octave apart: the first eighth is a rest, count it so that the three notes come in together and on time. The fermatas are held twice their value; Noctave waits for them. Then the motif passes from voice to voice in the right hand while the left holds the chord. The final C minor and G chords answer each other at the same tempo: prepare the right-hand position before each one, and keep the sound full, fortissimo, without hardening it.
