Beethoven Project: Symphonies 4 + 7

Why we are here: To tremble at the terrible beauty of the stars, to shed a tear at the perfection of Beethoven's symphonies, and to crack a cold one now and then.

David Letterman

Today, the thousands of men and women, young and old, who have spent so many sweet hours with his works . . . on whom his genius has shed its radiance, turned to him as toward a benefactor and a friend.

Hector Berlioz, at the dedication of a Beethoven statue in Bonn

In just over 30 years, Ludwig van Beethoven produced works that shattered norms and became the North Star for generations of composers. This week, Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann leads the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in the magnificent Seventh, a piece that bristles with bounding exuberance and rustic charm yet shimmers with a kind of unfathomable genius. Hear the Seventh Symphony paired with the electric energy of the Fourth Symphony, a piece that Hector Berlioz admired for its contrasts between a "lively, alert, and joyful" spirit and a "heavenly gentleness."