To serve as a link between the past and the future is not easy, though out their lives, Beethoven and Brahms tried to live up to this task. In 1803, Beethoven completed his Third Symphony Eroica. At the time, the French Revolution had just marked the end of an era, and Beethoven opened a new epoch with his music. Eroica Symphony was groundbreaking in both structure and motifs. The duration of this piece is over fifty minutes, longer than any of its precedents from the same genre. In addition, Beethoven expanded the range of this symphony and refined his ability to raise audience’s apprehension level. In playing with movement structure, he replaced the minuet with the more-spirited scherzo. Moreover, he employed a funeral march in the slow movement in order to pay tribute to heroes who died for their ideals, which has made this piece stand out throughout history.Beethoven was a tough act to follow for later generations of musicians. Yet his work has also been inspirational for them. Brahms was one such loyal devotee. Brahms completed his Second Piano Concerto in 1881, twenty-three years after the failure of the premiere of his First Piano Concerto. Breaking with the traditional three-movement structure of concertos, Brahms daringly added in a fourth movement and turned the piece into “a symphony performed by piano”. Judging from the scale and ambience of this work, Brahms was striving Beethoven.