Few composers have shaped the landscape of Western music as profoundly as Ludwig van Beethoven.
Straddling the Classical and Romantic eras, Beethoven's works are more than just monuments of musical craftsmanship—they are emotional odysseys, intellectual feats, and deeply human expressions. From the volcanic power of the 'Eroica' Symphony to the transcendental serenity of his late string quartets, Beethoven redefined what music could say and how it could make us feel.
But ranking Beethoven's greatest compositions is no easy task. His output is astonishingly rich and diverse: symphonies that shook the foundations of tradition, piano sonatas that reimagined the keyboard’s expressive range, and chamber music works that still sound daring two centuries later. Some pieces were radical in their day; others grew in stature with time, as generations uncovered their layers of innovation and soul.
This list counts down twenty of Beethoven’s most significant and enduring works, balancing artistic vision, emotional depth, historical importance, and sheer beauty. It includes orchestral epics and intimate miniatures, monumental statements of faith, and whispered late-style reflections. There’s no single “correct” order, but here is a journey through the core of Beethoven’s genius—an invitation to rediscover one of the greatest minds in musical history.
Best of Beethoven
20. Six Bagatelles (1824)
These short pieces, which Beethoven wrote while in the midst of composing (with enormous effort) his last and most strenuous works, must have been as much a relief for him to write as they are for us to listen to. Only one or two of the Bagatelles are regularly played: but they are all delightful.
If you need something in between the sublimity of Beethoven’s most demanding and rewarding works, and the routines of everyday life, these gently cheerful pieces provide the ideal bridge.
Recommended recording: Stephen Kovacevich
19. Violin Sonata in G, Op. 96 (1812)
This, the last of Beethoven’s ten sonatas for violin and piano, is a piece so glowing with good humour and gentleness that it is almost unique in the composer's oeuvre. The two performers are on genial terms from the opening exchange of trills onwards, and when the violin takes off out of sheer high spirits, it is with the full support of the piano.
It ends with a set of variations that includes a typically Beethovenian fugue, dry and austere, which sets the benignity of the rest of the Sonata in relief.
Recommended recording: Isabelle Faust / Alexander Melnikov Harmonia Mundi HMC902025/27
18. An die ferne Geliebte (1816)
Beethoven isn’t thought of as a major contributor to German art song, but to all intents he founded it. An die ferne Geliebte (‘To the distant beloved’) is his most striking achievement in this line, and the first German song cycle.
On the subject of more or less helpless love, these six songs may not be as agonised as those by Schubert or Schumann, but they’re plangent and equally melodious. They also show that Beethoven, whose music is almost never erotic, could express the urges he had in common with his fellow human beings, though he usually concentrated on what he regarded as nobler ones.
17. 'Eroica' Variations (1802)
These amazing variations, written when Beethoven was 32, are on a theme that fascinated him for many years and recurs in the 'Eroica' Symphony (see below). Here, the melody is subject to a series of ever wilder, often hilarious transformations, some of the later ones almost shocking in their audacity.
The composer, himself a great pianist, often liked to wrongfoot his audiences, especially with tender passages at which he roared with laughter.
Recommended recording: Emil Gilels DG 4231362
16. Symphony No. 8 (1812)
For a long time there was agreement that Beethoven’s odd-numbered symphonies were the big boys, while the evens were comparatively light relief. That’s false, and in no case more than in Beethoven's Eighth Symphony.
This is a compact work, mischief in every bar. There is something demonic in its humour, as you might expect from Beethoven at this summit of his career: those who think that ‘serious’ and ‘funny’ are opposites have the shallowness of that view ruthlessly exposed by this arch-master of emotional disruption.
Recommended recording: Vienna Philharmonic/Claudio Abbado
15. 'Archduke’ Piano Trio (1814)
This is the last masterpiece of Beethoven’s ‘middle’ period, and if it had been his last work we would have felt content that he ended on so comprehensively embracing a piece.
The slow movement has a rapt beauty nearly unique in Beethoven’s output, with a depth of feeling that presages what is to come. Often when this Trio is played, listeners don’t talk for some time after.
Recommended recording: Beaux Arts Trio Decca 4785153
14. Fidelio (1805)
Beethoven wrote just one opera, Fidelio, and it is a supreme masterpiece. The plot is in many ways absurd, the spoken dialogue inept, and Beethoven’s writing for the voice is, to put it gently, inconsiderate. And yet it has the power to move the listener to tears and ecstasy as few pieces do.
The heroine Leonore’s resolution, the agony of the scene where she thinks she is digging her husband’s grave and the unrestrained rejoicings at the end are among the glories of drama, indeed of all art.
Recommended recording: Christa Ludwig et al; Philharmonia/Otto Klemperer
13. Piano Concerto No. 5 ‘Emperor’ (1809-11)
This is Beethoven for once savouring the fullness of his powers with a work of celebration – not of anything in particular, but of the joy of creation as a whole. As with many composers, particular musical keys had connotations for him, and E flat – a key which meant much the same for Mozart – is a promise of richness and excitement.
The slow movement is an ecstatic dream (listen below), and the last bounds away with irrepressible energy, until it finally decides to take a rest.
We named this as one of the best piano concertos of all time.
12. Symphony No. 7 (1811-12)
Whenever Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is mentioned, Wagner’s description of it as ‘the apotheosis of the dance’ is bound to follow. There’s an interesting story of Wagner dancing his way through it while his father-in-law Liszt played his piano reduction of it.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall. Whatever, its most striking features are its pulverising energy in three of its movements, and its concentration on rhythm almost at the expense of anything else.
The other famous thing said about it was Weber’s claim that it showed that Beethoven was ripe for the madhouse. Even the celebrated slow movement is more interesting for its rhythm than for its melody.
It almost seems that Beethoven was intent on exhausting the possibility of writing one kind of music – and subsequent composers seem to have agreed that he had, until Stravinsky arrived on the scene a century later.
Recommended recording: Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/Riccardo Chailly Decca 478 3496
11. String Quartet, Op. 59 No. 1 ‘Razumovsky’ (1806)
Beethoven perhaps kept his deepest feelings for string quartets, of which he wrote three sets: early, middle and late. This first of three so-called ‘Razumovsky’ quartets is a work on a huge scale, once more breaking the mould of its genre.
Its soaring opening melody is utterly captivating, not least to its own composer who stole it, modified, for a later chamber work. The teasing Scherzo has the instruments interrupting one another, while the slow movement plumbs depths that nothing before in Beethoven’s chamber music had.
Recommended recording: Takács Quartet Decca 4708492
10. Violin Concerto (1806)
Beethoven’s genius was not primarily for melody; he was much more interested in development and transformation. His Violin Concerto is an exception. Though the basic motif of the huge first movement is five drum notes – as unthematic as can be, yet pervasive – when the full orchestra takes over it is with a soaring melody, taken still further by the soloist who plays some of Beethoven’s most serene, touching music. There is more drama, oddly, in the slow movement than in the outer ones.
We named this one of the best violin concertos of all time.
Recommended recording: Hilary Hahn (violin), Baltimore SO/David Zinman
9. Missa solemnis (1819-23)
Beethoven had no fixed religious beliefs, although he liked statements of Eastern origin such as ‘I am I’. But he had a religious temperament and, having written one rather routine mass earlier, girded his loins and produced this, his largest and most intransigent work.
Whereas Bach had no religious doubts, so his works have a comforting security, Beethoven seems to be trying to bring a religion into being with his assertiveness and even desperation. There are some beautiful, even sensuous passages, and it ends with a desperate cry for (earthly) piece.
8. Piano Sonata No. 29, ‘Hammerklavier’ (1818)
The Hammerklavier Sonata is one of Beethoven’s two most intimidating works (along with the Grosse Fuge, see below), and one of his greatest. It makes superhuman demands on its performer and listeners, and rewards them for a lifetime. Almost an hour long, it is ferociously compact, with a vast slow movement that plumbs the depths of agony or calm, depending on the listener.
The final movement is a gigantic fugue – a form Beethoven was by now obsessed with – on an immense, remorseless subject that virtually explodes before a few bars of peace lead back into the madness. There is no more astonishing music than this.
7. Diabelli Variations (1823)
Anton Diabelli was an ungifted performer who bet on immortality by writing a trivial little waltz which he sent to many composers, including Liszt and Schubert, asking for a variation on it. They obliged. Beethoven binned it, then fished it out and wrote 33 variations, his unbelievable peak of pianistic invention and inspiration.
The fecundity is such that you can listen to them daily and still find new things. The end never disappoints: after a stunning fugue, the pianist holds a chord for a long time and then moves into the most gracious, elegant minuet. This, from Beethoven!
6. Piano Sonata No. 32 (1820-3)
The last of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, brings this body of work to a conclusion so ultimate that it’s amazing that anyone has written sonatas since. It’s in only two movements, the first of which is declamatory, energetic, and not even all that great. But following that comes a set of variations which it’s hard to believe any mere mortal could have composed.
A slow and simple melody expands into the most extraordinary rhythms, even jazzy at one point, and ascends until the pianist is playing a triple trill, louder then softer, and the whole piece comes to rest. Have a listen:
5. Symphony No. 5 (1804-8)
If Beethoven's Fifth Symphony had a nickname, surely it would be ‘The Unavoidable’. One almost comes to dread those four notes which begin the work and never leave it alone. Yet it remains astonishing in its ferocity and in the uneasy feeling it can – should – give the listener of uncertainty about whether he or she is being attacked or is indeed the attacker.
Whichever, in a fresh performance the Fifth should still knock your socks off. The Scherzo has goblins stalking the earth (or so the author EM Forster thought in Howards End) and leads thrillingly to the finale, the most convincing non-religious orchestral celebration up until then.
4. String Quartet in B flat op. 130 (incl. Grosse Fuge, op. 133) (1825-6)
The last quartets – five of them – are Beethoven’s will and testament. They are original in every way, this one with six movements, including the gigantic and rebarbative fugue as the finale. There are no external criteria to assess them by, since they are like nothing else in music.
Op. 130 has a slow movement, the Cavatina, which made Beethoven weep when he thought about it. It’s hard to envisage anyone responding differently. Listen below:
Best of Beethoven: his 3 greatest works
2. Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’ (1804)
Beethoven arguably made his single most stunning advance with his Third Symphony, the Eroica. Not only is it the longest symphony written up to that time, it also has, in a vague way, a subject matter, as indicated by its title. Forget about Napoleon, as Beethoven did. This is about the heroic spirit in general, not one instance of it.
After its initial two hammer blows, the 'Eroica' surges into a prolonged movement in which passages of lyric beauty give way, time and again, to terrifying onslaughts. The second movement – the greatest of all funeral marches – shows who won. That movement itself ends by crumbling into silence.
The third movement, a simmering, rollicking Scherzo with a lusty trio for three horns, shows that Beethoven is not going to take death lying down; the last, a set of variations, takes the ‘Eroica’ theme and shows how many kinds of joy are possible. After this, nothing could be the same.
Recommended recording: Münchner Philharmoniker/Rudolf Kempe EMI 636 5552
2. Symphony No. 9 (1822-4)
Surely everyone will agree that the first three – purely orchestral – movements of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 work are the greatest symphonic movements he ever created. The first is crushing, the second a huge counter-attack of energy, the third a profound set of variations.
With four vocal soloists and a chorus added, the fourth movement, that great affirmation of brotherhood under a benign Father, has created the greatest division of opinion, not least due to the public uses for which it has been deployed. Many listeners, however, find it deeply moving.
Recommended recording: Tomowa-Sintow, Baltsa, Schreier, Van Dam, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Herbert von Karajan DG 477 6325
And the greatest Beethoven work of all is...
1. String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op. 131 (1826)
Stravinsky wrote of this work: ‘Everything in this masterpiece is perfect, inevitable, unalterable. It is beyond the impertinence of praise. The most affecting music of all, to me, is the beginning of the Andante moderato variation. The mood is like no other and the intensity, if it were to endure a bar longer, would be intolerable.’
It was another great composer, Wagner, who first celebrated the perfection of this work, perhaps above all the transcendental fugue with which it opens. At the end Beethoven writes a furious Allegro movement which brings us down to earth, realising that what we have been listening to earlier demands a purity of spirit which not many people can achieve or maintain.
Recommended recording: Quartetto Italiano Philips 4758685
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