Only a year separates the completion of Beethoven’s Second Symphony from that of his Third, yet in that time the composer made an enormous leap forward that left his contemporaries gasping in his wake. It was not just that the ’Eroica’ (’Heroic’) expanded the physical size of the symphony to hitherto unknown dimensions; it also imbued the genre with a new and gigantic message, turning it into an artistic and philosophical statement that transcended any of its previously accepted functions. For here Beethoven used the symphony to express nothing less than his abiding faith in mankind’s capacity for greatness.